Israel Adesanya is looking forward to meeting Alex Pereira inside the Octagon.
The UFC Middleweight Champion has quite the history with Pereira. Adesanya would fall short of beating Pereira twice in the kickboxing ring. He’d lose a decision before getting brutally knocked out by Pereira in 2017. With the former kickboxing king crossing over into MMA, Adesanya can not wait for his revenge.
Pereira has been no stranger when it comes to talking trash to the champ. Moving up the ranks, the Brazilian is boasting for a title shot against ‘The Last Stylebender’, where he vows to KO him again.
‘This Isn’t Kickboxing’
Adesanya isn’t going to let his words slide, especially now that they’re not in the ring anymore.
“This isn’t kickboxing, this is mixed martial arts,” Adesanya said during a UFC 276 Press Conference. “These ain’t big pillow gloves, these are four ounce deadly weapons that I can’t wait to drive through his face after I go through Jared Cannonier.”
Adesanya Looks Ahead
Of course, Pereira still has to take care of business against Sean Strickland at UFC 276 if he wants a chance at Adesanya. Strickland could potentially play spoiler to that.
Whatever the case may be, Adesanya is ready for anyone should he go through Cannonier himself.
“I look forward to either one of those fights,” Adesanya continued. “I don’t like this narrative of, ‘It’s too quick, it’s too quick for Pereira,’ but look, Jiri [Prochazka] just fought for and won the belt in his third fight in the UFC. Anderson [Silva] did it in his second fight. So that’s fine, he’s new to MMA.
“I’ve been in this game a long time and this TikTok generation has a 15-second memory. All they see is a knockout, but they don’t watch the first fight, or the second fight before the finish.”
