Jamahal Hill doesn’t understand all the backlash surrounding his UFC 300 main event with Alex Pereira.
Immediately following Ilia Topuria’s shocking second-round knockout of Alexander Volkanovski at UFC 298 on Saturday night, UFC CEO Dana White revealed that former light heavyweight champion Jamahal Hill will be returning to the Octagon to take on current 205-pound king Alex Pereira in the landmark event’s headliner on April 13.
The announcement was immediately met with a resounding “meh” from fight fans who were expecting something a bit more extravagant.
Addressing the backlash on his YouTube channel, ‘Sweet Dreams’ acknowledged that Dana White may have put his foot in his mouth when talking about how epic the featured fight at UFC 300 would be, but that doesn’t mean fans aren’t getting an absolute banger of a fight.
“The reaction to this has been kind of a mix of things,” Hill said. “A lot of outrage. A lot of disappointment and things like that. To be honest, it’s crazy to me for the most part because a lot of these people are the same people who spent the better part of however long calling me a crybaby. It’s crazy to see how a card can be stacked. The main card literally has a former champion or a champion in every single fight.
“The prelim card, each one of the prelims is worthy of being its own separate main event and people are crying. Let’s be real. It’s crying because you had unreal expectations for something. Now granted, I think Dana [White] may have overstepped with some of the comments he made, but he had every intention of delivering on those comments. But as you know, anybody who’s followed the UFC for some time, whenever Dana tells you he’s trying to deliver something, he wouldn’t talk like that if he wasn’t trying to deliver something that you people would feel is mindblowing.”
Did Dana hype up the main event for UFC 300? YES.
Am I upset about Jamahal Hill vs Alex Pereira? NO.
This matchup was EXPECTED to be next, but it was not a possibility in my mind for UFC 300 (timing).
YES I’m happy with this main event and YES it will deliver.🔥 @JamahalH pic.twitter.com/ARIdaRGVdM
— MMA CHICK🧜🏼♀️ (@MMACHICK_) February 20, 2024
Jamahal Hill Says His Fight with Alex Pereira Will Be a ‘Guaranteed Banger’
Despite your opinion on it as the UFC 300 main event, the fact remains that Jamahal Hill vs. Alex Pereira is a sensational fight between two of the promotion’s brightest stars. Both men are 6-1 inside the Octagon with each owning four knockouts highlight-reel knockouts.
‘Sweet Dreams’ first captured the 205-pound crown by besting Pereira’s friend and mentor, Glover Teixeira, in January 2023. Unfortunately, Hill never got the chance to defend the title as he suffered a ruptured Achilles, forcing him to vacate the title. That paved the way for Pereira to move up after claiming middleweight gold and win a second world title in just under a year’s time.
“You got one of the most technical guaranteed banger of a fight that you could ask for at this time with serious implications in historically one of the best weight divisions in the UFC and people are complaining,” Hill added.
He continued, “That’s crazy. Whenever you pay for a fight, do you not want somebody who’s coming to take somebody’s head off? To knock somebody out. Someone who has high-level skills and the capability to do so. You got that on both ends in this fight and for the disrespect to flood in the way that it has about this fight… What fight do you think would suffice?”
Watch the full episode below:
