Michel Pereira will make his first appearance outside the UFC in over seven years when he meets In Soo Hwang at Z Fight Night 5 on Dec. 19 in Incheon, South Korea.<\/p>\n
The middleweight matchup was announced Monday by Z Fight Night, the promotion founded by former UFC title challenger Chan Sung Jung, per MMA Mania. The card streams live on UFC Fight Pass.<\/p>\n
Return To Familiar Territory After UFC Exit<\/p>\n
Pereira became a free agent after dropping a unanimous decision to Shara Magomedov at UFC Baku in June. The Brazilian compiled a 10-6 record during his UFC run, which included eight straight wins at welterweight before moving to middleweight. After three consecutive first-round finishes at 185 pounds, he lost four of his final five Octagon appearances, including a fifth-round stoppage to Anthony Hernandez that derailed his contender push.<\/p>\n
South Korea represents a homecoming of sorts for the 33-year-old. Pereira went 3-0 with three knockouts under the Road FC banner before joining the UFC in 2019. Hwang brings a 9-2 record and the Road FC middleweight championship to the bout. The South Korean dropped a decision to Paddy McCorry on the Contender Series in 2025 but rebounded in May by stopping former Bellator and PFL veteran Alex Polizzi in the third round at ZFN 4.<\/p>\n
The Pereira-Magomedov loss at UFC Baku drew scrutiny after Magomedov repeatedly grabbed Pereira’s hair during grappling exchanges without a point deduction from referee Herb Dean. All three judges scored the fight for Magomedov, closing the door on Pereira’s time with the promotion.<\/p>\n
Photo by Maya Alexa G. Romero<\/a> on Unsplash<\/a><\/p>\n Original reporting:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Michel Pereira will make his first appearance outside the UFC in over seven years when he meets In…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":957702,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[49,48,641,638,82],"class_list":["post-957701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-fighting","tag-mma","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/957701","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=957701"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/957701\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/957702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=957701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=957701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=957701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}