Chael Sonnen is still hopeful that Alex Pereira could pose Jon Jones problems after UFC 313.
Pereira (12-3 MMA, 9-2 UFC) lost his light heavyweight title to Magomed Ankalaev (21-1-1 MMA, 12-1-1 UFC) by unanimous decision in this past Saturday’s main event at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
Had Pereira won, many thought a super fight against UFC heavyweight champion Jones would be on the horizon. While that’s off the table for now, Sonnen thinks that despite losing, Pereira shut down a criticism about his game when he stuffed all 12 of Ankalaev’s takedown attempts.
“You don’t get very far when you start talking about Alex Pereira vs. Jon Jones,” Sonnen said on his YouTube channel. “You just don’t get there because we know that Jon can throw him down and beat him up. Like, that’s just something that Jon does so well. He can throw people down and then beat them up.
“Well, you go watch this fight, and you go, ‘Hey, you know what? It turns out that old Alex Pereira isn’t so easy to take down.’ Alex Pereira really showed some stuff. That entire narrative that he can’t wrestle and he can’t defend is now gone. Ankalaev revealed his plan and that was to take him down – his plan failed.”
However, Daniel Cormier disagrees. He thinks Pereira’s loss to Ankalaev showed that he’d have trouble dealing with the strength at heavyweight.
For more on the card, visit MMA Junkie’s event hub for UFC 313.
