Alex Pereira put himself back on top of the light heavyweight division with a lopsided knockout win over Magomed Ankalaev at UFC 320, and now, he\u2019s eying a potential showdown against Jon Jones at the UFC White House card in 2026.<\/p>\n
But as big as that fight might be, Pereira likely sets foot in the octagon as a massive underdog going up against Jones, who is widely considered the greatest fighter of all time. That\u2019s why UFC legend Matt Brown believes Jones only real option is finally facing current heavyweight champion Tom Aspinall because he just doesn\u2019t see Pereira having much of a chance in the same fight.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want the competitive fight,\u201d Brown explained on the latest episode of The Fighter vs. The Writer. \u201cThat goes exactly right into what I was saying. Do we want entertainment? What Alex and Jon is going to do is it\u2019s going to have a ridiculous buildup. Where everybody\u2019s going to be pumped. There\u2019s going to be people betting on Alex, there\u2019s going to be people just like Conor [McGregor] going and fighting Floyd [Mayweather] \u2014 like oh yeah, Conor\u2019s got a chance! I think Alex has a better chance than Conor did against Floyd, by the way, but you get my point.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe matchup is literally the nightmare matchup for Alex Pereira. Jon is as big, probably a little bit bigger than Alex Pereira. At heavyweight, certainly bigger. A million times better wrestler. There\u2019s no way in hell that Alex has wrestling at Jon Jones\u2019 level at this point. Even if Jon Jones is out doing cocaine for the last year and then just shows up and fights.\u201d<\/p>\n
The same can\u2019t be said for Aspinall, who has transformed into a human wrecking machine at heavyweight with eight wins in the UFC \u2014 all by knockout or submission with only one fight making it to the second round. Aspinall is currently matched up against Ciryl Gane in the UFC 321 main event, but he\u2019s a sizeable favorite to win and retain his title.<\/p>\n
Brown argues that Aspinall is a legitimate threat to actually topple Jones and hand the former heavyweight and light heavyweight champion the first real loss of his career. On the flipside, while he admits that anything can happen in a fight, Brown just doesn\u2019t see a clear path to victory for Pereira over Jones.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the odds would be pretty heavily in Jon\u2019s favor there.,\u201d Brown said. \u201cJon and Alex both being \u2018A\u2019 sides, we know that Jon is probably going to win this fight. I don\u2019t think there will be a lot of debate on who\u2019s going to win the fight. The chances of it looking like Jones-[Ciryl] Gane is pretty high.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now Brown concedes that just based on fan interest alone that Jones vs. Pereira is probably the bigger fight but that doesn\u2019t mean that a matchup against Aspinall just falls off a cliff in comparison.<\/p>\n
The real question comes down to whether or not the UFC is just trying to make the White House card a pure spectacle or if there\u2019s hope for some really meaningful, championship level fights.<\/p>\n
\u201cIs it a sport or is it entertainment?\u201d Brown said. \u201cEntertainment wise, I think we talked a little bit about the White House card, period, is this going to be make the biggest fights you can or make relevant fights? If you\u2019re making the biggest fights you can, you go with Alex Pereira-Jon Jones, 100 percent, especially if you\u2019re Dana [White] and you trust that Jon is going to make it there on time or not go to jail in the meantime or anything. That\u2019s a no brainer in terms of the biggest fight you could potentially make.<\/p>\n
\u201cI still think he should still fight Tom Aspinall. I don\u2019t know which is really a bigger fight. I know he\u2019s a bigger star, but Jon Jones is big enough to carry whatever fight that he comes back to. If it\u2019s Tom Aspinall, he\u2019s fighting for the heavyweight title now and that makes it as big of a fight as if he\u2019s fighting Alex Pereira just to be fighting Alex Pereira, I think.\u201d<\/p>\n
Add to that, Brown believes long term the UFC doesn\u2019t actually risk as much by putting Aspinall in a fight against Jones because of the dreadful state of the heavyweight division currently.<\/p>\n
Aspinall already doesn\u2019t have many options for potential opposition with Gane almost getting his title shot by default off a one-fight win streak, which was a highly controversial decision over Alexander Volkov.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I\u2019m the UFC, personally, I take the risk with Tom,\u201d Brown said. \u201cIf Tom loses, the heavyweight division basically already sucks. He loses, it sucks a little bit more and Jon Jones is so great that we can\u2019t find a heavyweight to beat him either. If Tom wins, it brings an entirely new spark to the heavyweight division and the heavyweights are the sellers. Every combat sport in history, everybody wants to watch the heavyweights.<\/p>\n
\u201cTom, if he\u2019s able to go out and secure a victory, he is the baddest man on the planet. He also happens to be well spoken, a good dude that is able to stay out of trouble, so far at least, gets the job done and it\u2019s a fairly marketable guy. I think there\u2019s more upside.\u201d<\/p>\n
Perhaps the biggest \u2018X\u2019 factor in all this is Jones, who showed little interest in facing Aspinall when he was still holding onto the UFC heavyweight title.<\/p>\n
Maybe that\u2019s changed now with the potential for a slot on the White House card, which is directly what Jones referenced as a driving factor for him when he decided to end his brief retirement from the sport.<\/p>\n
But there\u2019s a world where Brown sees Jones demanding Pereira and nobody else.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know Jon\u2019s going to push for that,\u201d Brown said. \u201cHe might even say if you don\u2019t give me Alex, I don\u2019t fight at the White House, f*ck ya\u2019ll. Go get Conor and Michael [Chandler]. He might do that. Jon\u2019s that type of guy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Listen to new episodes of The Fighter vs. The Writer every Tuesday with audio only versions of the podcast available on Apple Podcasts<\/a>, Google Podcasts<\/a>, Spotify<\/a>, and iHeartRadio<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alex Pereira put himself back on top of the light heavyweight division with a lopsided knockout win over…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":195192,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[49,48,641,701,638,37036,329,82,640,702],"class_list":{"0":"post-195191","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mma","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-fighting","11":"tag-latest-news","12":"tag-mma","13":"tag-mmaf-podcast-network","14":"tag-podcasts","15":"tag-sports","16":"tag-ufc","17":"tag-ufc-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=195191"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195191\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/195192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=195191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=195191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=195191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}