Daniel Cormier knows what it takes to rule over the heavyweight and light heavyweight divisions, and he doesn’t think Alex Pereira can do the same.
Pereira already has two-division champion on his résumé after defeating Israel Adesanya for the 185-pound title in 2022 and then capturing a vacant 205-pound title with a win over Jiri Prochazka in 2023. Unfortunately for “Poatan,” his impressive light heavyweight reign came to an end Saturday when he was defeated by Magomed Ankalaev.
That setback has seemingly put a halt to talks of Pereira moving up to heavyweight for a third title, and Cormier thinks that’s probably for the best.
“When we watched Saturday, and watched him and Ankalaev fight, I think he’s kind of maxed out the weight he can go up,” Cormier said on Good Guy / Bad Guy. “I don’t think he’s strong enough to go with anyone bigger, because the amount of pressure that Ankalaev was able to generate without the danger coming back at him like we expected, those heavyweights would kind of just walk right through what he was throwing at him.”
Ankalaev snapped Pereira’s run of three straight title defenses with a measured offensive attack that saw him pressure Pereira to keep him on the back foot and mix in grappling to frustrate the Brazilian striker. Though Ankalaev failed to complete a single takedown attempt in the five-round contest, he was able to keep Pereira pinned to the fence for long stretches of time, which meant limited significant offense for the champion.
Cormier’s co-host Sonnen isn’t convinced that Pereira’s heavyweight dreams are finished, though he expects Pereira to make plenty of adjustments if he attempts to change divisions one more time.
“One thing we can all agree, whatever Pereira does next will be for a world title,” Sonnen said. “But he’s talking about [UFC middleweight champion] Dricus [du Plessis]—that’s not going to happen—I’m talking about Tom Aspinall. Dana [White] got on board with that a little bit, now it looks like they’re settled back down, but he’s not going to go and jump and agree to that fight unless he believes he can change the outcome.
“I am curious what he felt because his hands simply weren’t landing. His calf kicks were, his defense was on point, he got out-boxed and I think that was a surprise for everybody. But it was that same shot, it was the same ‘slip outside, throw a left hand, rush him into the fence’ it was that same rinse and repeat that maybe if he worked on that one sequence he could have some better moments.”
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The Boxing Esq. Podcast. Kurt Emhoff talks to John Nash about UFC CEO Dana White’s official foray into boxing.
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Hilo con los mejores KOs/TKOs de la semana. Top 10
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No way this rematch is actually happening.
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— Chris Weidman (@chrisweidman) March 10, 2025
FINAL THOUGHTS
I still think it would be fun to see Poatan go up to heavyweight and punch out, like, Waldo Cortes-Acosta or someone, but Cormier has a point: Based on what we saw in the Ankalaev loss, do you really like his chances against Jon Jones or Tom Aspinall? And if you don’t, is there any point in him jumping up to heavyweight?
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