Today's UFC was a card that i was not terribly excited about because I wasn't really interested in much of the undercards. Therefore I just watched the fights on some dodgy streaming website instead of going to the pub. I actually forgot it was on and logged in to luckily have the feed start right when the first round started... IT was a good thing too because the fight was over so quickly.
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When Pereira lost the belt in the last matchup between these two guys a lot of people were kind of shocked because Alex had up to that point been rather dominant in everything he had done outside of one shock loss to Israel Adesanya.
When he lost by unanimous decision to Magomed Akalaev at UFC 313 there were a ton of people, including me, that thought he looked significantly worse than he normally does and then when Alex started saying that he was ill and injured but took the fight anyway, we had our doubts and were kind of disappointed because it is never welcomed when fighters make excuses.
Today's light-heavyweight matchup looked like it was going to be intense and well, it was. The fact that it was over in 1 minute and 25 seconds kind of proves that Pereira very well was very under the weather back in March and we were too quick to judge him.
One of the hypothesis that I can up with was that Pereira intentionally dropped this belt so that he could face off against Jon Jones where the real money fight would be at heavyweight, but thankfully I was incorrect about that as well.
This fight was over really before it ever got going and with someone that has hands of steel like Alex Pereira, this is always a possibility if he is at full force.
A very well timed right hit Ankalaev unchecked in the head and the man was rocked to the ground immediately after. I have to hand it to referee Herb Dean because he let the ground and pound go for a while before calling the fight off. Alex was on top raining down 12-6 elbows (which are legal now, finally) and while Ankalaev was in fact protecting himself, there was no way out from that position and I would be surprised if he didn't have a few broken fingers out of the exchange as he tried, I guess successfully, to protect his face. He also ended up taking a couple of extremely sharp elbows to the body that for a normal human, would have resulted in the immediate snapping of most or all of your ribs.
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Footage and images of the TKO are tough to come by at this point because UFC carefully protects their product for a while after the fight.
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Pereira was as gracious in victory as he is in defeat and had nothing but kind words to say about his opponent and didn't take any time at all to "rub it in." These are the actions of a true champion in my mind. He also asked the crowd for a moment of silence to honor Jon Jones' brother who apparently has passed away. I also never knew that Jones' older brother played for the Baltimore Ravens.
It was tough for me to have an opinion about what I thought would happen in this fight because Periera looked pretty bad the last time he fought. I can only surmise that he was being 100% truthful about being both ill and injured because this Alex was a totally different person who absolutely dominated the fight. He still went into this fight as a pretty heavy underdog with Ankalaev sitting at a -285 favorite on betting odds.
It was over before it really started with the now ex-champion only managing to get in 4 strikes total before the fight was over.
Did you see the fight? All 1 and a half minutes of it? What did you think of it?