{"id":793718,"date":"2026-07-11T14:45:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-11T14:45:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/793718\/"},"modified":"2026-07-11T14:45:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-11T14:45:09","slug":"alex-pereira-aims-for-november-ufc-return-at-madison-square-garden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/793718\/","title":{"rendered":"Alex Pereira aims for November UFC return at Madison Square Garden"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">Alex Pereira has yet to book his next UFC bout after coming up short in his attempt to win the interim heavyweight championship in June and he\u2019s eyeing a spot on the yet-to-be-announced November show at Madison Square Garden in New York.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">\u201cI think November. November is a good time [to come back and fight] in New York,\u201d Pereira told <a href=\"https:\/\/agfight.com\/noticias\/ufc-alex-poatan-confirma-permanencia-no-peso-pesado-e-mira-retorno-em-novembro\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Ag. Fight<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s been a while since I fought there. I don\u2019t really remember the dates, it\u2019s hard. My debut was there, but I\u2019ve fought there a few more times since then. \u2026 It\u2019s close to my house, about an hour and a half drive. So there\u2019s no [travel] fatigue or jet lag.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">\u201cPoatan\u201d lost by knockout to Ciryl Gane in the co-main event of UFC White House on June 14, a result he has contested publicly due to illegal strikes landed by the Frenchman and allowed by referee Herb Dean. He has then decided not to officially appeal the result with the athletic commission. Pereira has ruled out a return to 205 pounds, and will instead fight at heavyweight going forward.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">The Brazilian star fought three times at MSG and came out victorious on all occasions. Pereira stopped Andreas Michailidis with a flying knee in his UFC debut in the arena in 2021 and returned to the same venue a year later to finish Israel Adesanya to capture the middleweight belt. \u201cPoatan\u201d claimed the light heavyweight title in November 2023 with a knockout over Jiri Prochazka in November 2024.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alex Pereira has yet to book his next UFC bout after coming up short in his attempt to&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":793719,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,1347,785,85,787,1396],"class_list":["post-793718","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-latest-news","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-ufc","tag-ufc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/793718","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=793718"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/793718\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/793719"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=793718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=793718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=793718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}