This guy just can't stand still it would appear because even though he is scheduled to defend his title at light heavyweight in the near future, he is already demanding a title shot at middleweight, where he was once champion before.
There are a couple of reasons why Alex might want this shot and a lot of reasons why he would be given the opportunity to do so should he be serious about it.
One of the reasons could be that at 37 he is getting near the age in MMA where you will get retired by your own body, regardless of how talented you are. Very few fighters have remained in their prime past 35, and even fewer past 40. Pereira could be a different breed of course, but it is unlikely that the body will continue to cooperate and have someone be competitive after a certain age. I know from my own experience as an athlete that no matter how much I trained, I simply couldn't keep up with the younger guys out there in any of the sports that I excelled in when I was in my 20's. But then again, Alex may want to be the first to do this.
Another reason why he might want to return to middleweight is because that belt was actually taken from him in his one and only loss in the UFC. Despite the fact that the person who took it from him has not been doing that great as of late and isn't even the champion, he may have something to prove here. When Alex won that belt there was a lot of people out there including myself that thought that he was just very lucky rather than talented. I don't think that there is any real question about his talent anymore after some of the astounding victories he has had since joining UFC.
His victory over Jiri was something extremely impressive to me and even though I had been converted at that point and believed that Alex is indeed one of the greatest MMA fighters in the world, to dismantle Jiri the way that he did really turned a lot of heads. I thought that Jiri was going to best him but boy oh boy, was I incorrect about that!
Another motivating factor to Alex Pereira wanting a shot at the middleweight title is because there is something he has not yet achieved in UFC and that is holding the belt at multiple weight classes at the same time. There is only 4 people that have ever done this and they are Amanda Nunes, Conor McGregor, Daniel Cormier, and Henry Cejudo. This is a very elite status and maybe Alex wants to have a go at this and maybe, just maybe he has something even greater in mind where he wants to be the only person to ever have 3 belts at once. He would have to be very quick to make this happen and would need to win the middleweight belt and then bulk up like crazy and fight Jon Jones for Heavyweight as well. I think if he were to pull that off that there would be no doubt who the GOAT actually is. I think this is a very long shot but Alex keeps proving the haters wrong and achieving everything that he tries to do.
I'm quite certain that Dana White would be perfectly ok with giving Pereira any shot that he wants because the management in UFC is very aware that anytime that Pereira is on a fight card that the sales are going to be through the roof. While I have not been a fan of people with clout getting a shot at belts just because they want it rather than working their way through the ranks, I do understand that MMA is first and foremost, a business that whose primary objective is to make tons of money.
So what do you think? Could Alex both defend his belt in the upcoming light-heavyweight bout and then go on to also defeat Dricus Du Plessis at middleweight a few months later? Lord knows that would be super exciting to see him try!