Alex Pereira is moving up to heavyweight, and it sounds like he plans to stay there.<\/p>\n
\u201cPoatan\u201d entered the UFC as a huge middleweight, winning and losing the belt before moving up to light heavyweight where he became a two-time 205 pound champion. Now he\u2019s relinquished that title to move up to heavyweight where he faces Ciryl Gane for a third title at the UFC White House event<\/a> on June 11th.<\/p>\n Dropping a title is a big deal, but not for Pereira who says his new UFC contract doesn\u2019t change financially<\/a> if he\u2019s not holding a belt. You\u2019d think that would give him some flexibility to move around even more, but according to Alex he plans on staying at heavyweight, win or lose.<\/p>\n \u201cI could make light heavyweight again, but I don\u2019t think there\u2019s anything new for me there,\u201d Pereira said on the Ariel Helwani Show. \u201cMany guys just go on the heat of the moment, they jump up a weight class and they lose, they come back to the weight division. but I\u2019ve been expressing for a long time that I\u2019ve been wanting to fight at heavyweight. I think I\u2019ll stay there.\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s sad news for Magomed Ankalaev, who no doubt wanted a rubber match against Pereira after the two went 1-1<\/a> over 2025. As for how \u201cPoatan\u201d thinks his power will convert now that he\u2019s competing two weight classes up from his starting weight in the UFC?<\/p>\n \u201cI made all the history at middleweight, light heavyweight. I\u2019ve been listening to my body, seeing how my body has been reacting,\u201d Pereira said. \u201cI know some guys are going to say, \u2018He doesn\u2019t have heavyweight size.\u2019 But I feel like I hit like a heavyweight. I have trained with enough heavyweights. I weigh about 245 pounds right now, so I think this is a great opportunity for me to keep making history.\u201d<\/p>\n One could argue that there\u2019s less interesting fights at heavyweight than there were at light heavyweight. But Pereira still anticipates that UFC will manage to sort out their issues with Jon Jones,<\/a> who is currently seeking his release from the promotion.<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cI believe it happens because he would have to be released from the UFC, and I don\u2019t think the UFC is going to release him anytime soon,\u201d he said. \u201cIf he wants to fight, who\u2019s going to be against him? It\u2019s going to be against me.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alex Pereira is moving up to heavyweight, and it sounds like he plans to stay there. \u201cPoatan\u201d entered…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":546161,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,785,85,1396],"class_list":["post-546160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-ufc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=546160"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546160\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/546161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=546160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=546160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=546160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}