Destroyer or Pretender: The MMA Potential of Alex Pereira
Photo Credit: Dean Mouhtaropoulos/Getty Images
The mere thought of one of the deadliest strikers in combat sports converting over to mixed martial arts is always something that will whet the appetite of MMA fans.
The bonus is twofold: the intrigue of seeing a talent injection into your sport, and the potential for ‘your sport’ to one-up on another if they fail.
For a fan of all combat sports like myself, however, considering the potential success or failure of two-weight Glory champion Alex Pereira (40-6, 29 KOs in kickboxing) is not about loyalty: rather, a genuine curiosity to see what damage he can dish out against MMA’s best.
Known as ‘Po Atan’ (Stone Hand), Alex Pereira has had an excellent few years, winning two Glory titles en route to being named The Fight Site’s kickboxer of the year for 2019. Heavy-handed, he is the kickboxing equivalent of a Bob Foster or Julian Jackson, with a left hook that splatters his opposition all over the ring and an accurate right hand that can do damage without needing to land on the button. With wins over Simon Marcus, Jason Wilnis, Yousri Belgaroui showing his worth as a top-level kickboxer, it is his meme-worthy knockout of current UFC middleweight champ Israel Adesanya that has made him well known in MMA circles.
Pondering what he could do to the comparatively rudimentary strikers in MMA is mouth-watering to say the least.
But, do we really need to ponder too much? Pereria already has three MMA bouts to his name: 2-1, with two knockouts, he competed for Brazilian promotion ‘Jungle Fights’ back in 2015 and 2016.
Four years have passed since his last MMA fight, so how much can we take from them, if at all? The rumours of him transitioning full-time have persisted for a while (and we know he trains with MMA fighters), so there is a good chance he has been preparing to convert and has shored up some of the holes in his game.
For the sake of argument, though, let’s assume he hasn’t. Let’s assume the UFC wants to sign him merely to market a rematch with middleweight champion Israel Adesanya. Positing that the UFC does not want to make the same mistakes they had with touted imports from within MMA (such as Mirko Cro Cop and Hatsu Hioki), let alone the disaster that was Gokhan Saki’s UFC tenure, let’s imagine that they take a softer approach with Pereira, matching him with fighters that are stylistically suited to meet their maker at the end of his devastating left hand.
First, let’s take a look at what he has shown us in his MMA bouts thus far.
Po Atan the MMA fighter: 0-1
Pereira’s MMA debut was an auspicious one, as he lost against undefeated (3-0) Quemuel Ottoni. A few factors appear to be in play here: a raw MMA game, ego, and poor in-fight decisions leading to fatigue were Pereira’s main opponents in the fight, but let’s see why.
Early on, Pereira looked to flex his grappling muscles, snatching an arm, dragging Ottoni down to the mat and attempting to transition to an armbar.
Pereira continued with this attempt for some time, but didn’t do the basics right: he couldn’t get his right leg under Ottoni, and burned a lot of energy going for his low percentage technique.
When he eventually got into position, he spent time fiddling with a wristlock: he looked like a novice grappler, and Ottoni easily spun out to get into a favourable position. Pereira reacts quick to the back take, but in attempting to scramble out only makes it worse for himself. The key here is that Ottoni is evidently a far superior grappler to him, so the wise thing would be to stay away from extended ground sequences.
Pereira eventually lucked out into being in Ottoni’s guard after fighting off a choke. He stacks Ottoni. Then, while in transition, Pereira ends up taking his back, getting in some much needed ground-and-pound. However, he then goes for the same move that got him into a bad position in the first place: a straight armbar.
When Pereira finally gets in position to end the fight, he doesn’t straighten his hips out like he’s supposed to: Ottoni grimaces, but has enough time to escape. After losing position, Pereira just sits there; doesn’t attempt to get up, doesn’t attempt to transition, and he looks physically spent having chased a submission he was never going to get. Another black mark against Peraira’s fight IQ
In the second round, Pereira went back to basics, and it looked for a minute that he would win by easy knockout. The same power-boxing style that has brought him success in kickboxing was on full display, and Ottoni showed remarkable toughness to gut it out.
Hubris was Pereira’s downfall here, as he waded into the pocket with no concern for what his opponent was throwing back at him. Periera’s own sense of distance seemed to evaporate, and he became fixated on smashing through his durable opponent.
After hitting a heavy knee, Pereira seemed shocked that his opponent was still standing there. When Ottoni started moving his head and mounting some offence of his own, Pereira tired again—quickly—and was on the back foot almost as soon as his rampage started.
Pereira covered up like a novice, hardly resembling the world class striker he is. Nonetheless, he showed flashes, using this defensive time to gather himself, slipping a wild punch and firing back with his patented left hook, but it didn’t land cleanly and he found himself pressed up against the cage, grabbing an overhook and waiting for a fortuitously quick separation from the referee.
Back in center cage, Pereira again showed a lackadaisical approach and little to no cage awareness: not concerned about what his opponent was throwing at him, he backed up from each sloppily thrown strike until he found himself backed up against the cage again. Ottoni really started to mount some offence of his own here, brawling with a nearly-disintegrated Pereira.
Pereira did withstand a barrage against the cage, and followed up with his left hook, but he was only throwing single strikes, loading up and finding them glancing without their desired effect. He looked tired halfway through round two and was easily corralled back against the cage again. For the rest of the round, Ottoni easily pressured the storied striker, looking the more dangerous fighter despite being a podgy, undersized guy. A superior striker and pressure fighter to Ottoni might have made Pereira pay for his laziness on the feet, much as the excellent Artur Kyshyenko did when he battered the Brazilian to a TKO loss back in 2015.
Come the third round and ‘Po Atan’ was done; backed up against the cage and with Ottoni deep on a double leg. He didn’t try to create separation, instead grabbing a front headlock like panicking fighters tend to do. Easily surrendering the take down and thus the fight, Pereira gave in to a choke midway through the third round.
Ottoni must be praised for his bravery and grit, but due to his poor in-cage decisions (including chasing submissions), rather than trying to utilize the cage to maximize his own strengths, Alex Pereira was his own worst enemy in his professional MMA debut.
You can watch the entire fight here, and I recommend it. Ottoni/Pereira is a fun, sloppy brawl with some exciting sequences, and a few violent exchanges. However, we’re not here to see if ‘Stone Hand’ can be in fun brawls, we’re here to see if there is any hope of him making a dent in the UFC’s roster.
Second Fight: 1-1
His second fight was against a less ambitious opponent, Marcelo Cruz, nicknamed—somewhat amusingly, after watching footage of him—’The Rock’.
With a record of 8-7 going in and having been finished five times, ‘The Rock’ looked to be an easier fight on paper for the nascent MMA game of Pereira. Whilst he was definitely less formidable than Ottoni, Cruz had enough success to still raise questions of Pereira’s MMA skill set.
From the get-go, ‘Stone Hand’ showed an improved strategy: establishing and maintaining range with his long punches, asserting himself with a sharp rear low kick, and stopping his opponent from gaining any ground on him with a wheel kick. After a hard one-two split the guard, Pereira didn’t rush in: when his opponent circled out, he instead attacked him with another low kick. When his opponent anticipated his killer left hook, he regained his form and backed off. So far, so good.
Then, ‘The Rock’ feinted upstairs and shot a takedown, a barely disguised level change that nonetheless rendered Pereira’s preferred distance untenable. Trapped in an over-under, Pereira tried to fight off the body lock but was unaware of what he was doing or what situation he was in.
The Fight Site analyst Tommy Elliot with the details:
“He was positionally dominated, but he didn’t recognize it. It was an unequal over-under clinch because Alex’s underside was trapped hard against his body, he couldn’t lever effectively with it. He should have thrown his hips back to create space and try to free his underhook side. But instead he just hipped in and tried to push to the cage, but he didn’t have the upper body control to make it work. He stood himself up for the ouchi gari (inside trip). It’s pretty clear he’s a kickboxer and not an experienced Nak Muay, because his clinch instincts suck.”
Pereira’s guard leaves a lot to be desired: his attempts to escape are hindered by an apparent lack of flexibility and explosiveness off his back. He does good defensive work—controlling the head and arms to protect himself when his opponent postures up—but might have remained grounded for the rest of the round had the referee not inexplicably stood the combatants up.
Back on the feet, Pereira got back to business, landing a big left hook that visibly staggered his man. When clinched up again, he created separation and stayed active with knees, but persisted too much and wound up off-balance, leading to him being pushed back up against the fence.
Wisely opting to not go for an armbar after a tangle saw Pereira wind up on his opponents back with an overhook. Pereira and his opponent willingly disengaged, with the kickboxer smartly picking his spots and taking his time with leg kicks, before his thunderous punches cracked ‘The Rock’ like papier-mache. Result: Alex Pereira KO1 Marcelo Cruz
This was definitely a smarter performance (who would’ve thought a kickboxer keeping a fight standing would be wise?) and with less glaring holes than in his first fight. Pereira demonstrated better management of his gas tank, safety—rather than arrogance—in grappling phases, and awareness of the mismatches he could create strategically. These factors saw Alex Pereira win with relative ease despite spending some time grounded with little clue how to defend himself. Still, he was too easy to take down, too easy to maneuver in the clinch, and got himself close to dangerous cage positions by backing straight up when faced with even a vague threat of return fire.
Third Fight: 2-1
In Pereira’s third fight (against Marcus ‘Tatu’ Vinicius Fialho Da Silveira, 6-0, five finishes), the staggering ease of his regional-level opponent’s clinch entries is perhaps the biggest indictment on the kickboxer’s potential as a mixed martial artist.
In the edit above, you see: jab feint into a single leg; slipped punch into a takedown attempt; punch feint into an entry; Pereira crowding his own work and easily having his lead leg snatched; a flurry of punches that sends him back to the cage in a straight line ; a winged overhand right to close the distance ; wild looping punches to close the distance ; a naked entry which is still successful; a whiffed spinning back fist followed up by a barely disguised entry which still gets Pereira to back up to the cage; slipped punch and a very slow ‘reactive’ takedown attempt which drives Pereira all the way over to the other side of the cage.
With poor balance, Pereira was easy to move around the cage with basic clinch techniques. Luckily for him, as with his other fights, he got very favourable resets from the official: his opponent looks dumbfounded and seems to realise pretty early on in the fight that he would be granted very little chance to work.
To his credit, Pereira works hard in the clinches, defends takedown attempts significantly better than he did in his first two fights, and manages to survive in the grappling phase of the contest long enough to batter Marcus in the second round. Still, this was an inevitable victory made much more difficult by Pereira’s raw MMA game.
Improvements to be made
If we consider the amount of issues Alex Pereira found when taking these MMA bouts—and with no knowledge of just how much training or improvement he has seen in the meantime—it is clear to see that any full-time transition to MMA will be fraught with issues.
The way he is so easily pressed to the cage reminds me of Junior dos Santos: an elite fighter who lost time and time again, because he could not control his own range and circled himself into bad positions. Pereira often backs straight up, and reacts to everything his opponent does in a way that exacerbates the deficiencies in his game.
If I was advising him, I would recommend practicing intercepting knees, as it is clear that trying to fight takedowns is not his strong suit at all. I would also get him to work on pivoting out, rather than backing straight up. An overhaul of his poor clinch game would go a long way to improving his chances of keeping fights at his preferred range.
In kickboxing, Pereira has relaxed in recent years, and general poise has come with it. This may be the case with MMA; he is particularly concerned with being taken out of his comfort zone and in turn, gets taken out of his comfort zone quite regularly. It is worth mentioning that I am working with a small sample size here: with the right coaching, there is every chance we could see a markedly improved fighter.
As it stands, although the rumours have persisted for a while now, the two-weight kickboxing champ has denied them when they resurfaced again this week.
However, let’s not forget that 2021 is not that far away, and with Glory having a deal with UFC Fight Pass, who knows what Endeavor could wrangle contractually.
The question is then, if he was to join the UFC contrary to his recent statement, is there any way Dana White & Co. could build him into a viable contender and cash in off the back of his prior fights with Israel Adesanya?
There are few favourable match-ups for him looking at his MMA contests so far: perhaps a pure striker like Uriah Hall (ranked 10th at 185lbs) might be an easy way to gain notoriety, and to give Pereira a solid opponent that will likely fight at his preferred range. An unpolished banger like Ian Heinisch might also grant Pereira the exact fight he’s looking for.
Or perhaps a solid wrestler past his best with fading durability—but retaining name value—like Chris Weidman might be a worthy roll of the dice, especially considering the former UFC champ might be even more vulnerable cutting to 185lbs at his age. Weidman gets into prolonged striking battles, and whilst he probably still has enough to dominate Pereira, it is also likely he will get blasted at some stage of the fight if it takes place in open space long enough.
The sobering fact when analysing Pereira is that any MMA promotion would have to take risks in order to move him up the ranks quickly, as matching him soft to build him up will likely see the wheels come off just as soon as they would if matching him with a dangerous contender.
My advice to him would be to stay true to his recent statement that the UFC rumours are false, and stay in his lane as one of kickboxing’s premier fighters.