Alex Pereira believes it will be impossible for Israel Adesanya "not to engage" in their trilogy title fight.
Adesanya will make his latest defence of his UFC middleweight title when he comes up against former two-time rival Pereira in the main event of UFC 281 at Madison Square Garden, New York on November 12. 'Style Bender' has yet to be defeated at middleweight during his UFC career, but Pereira famously defeated Adesanya twice during their prior kickboxing careers.
'Style Bender' has come into criticism for his recent performances against Jarod Cannonier, Robert Whittaker and Marvin Vettori after failing to score statement stoppage victories. But Brazilian Pereira believes it will be impossible for Adesanya not to get hurt if he comes into his range.
"I can tell you that it will be impossible for him not to engage, if he’s within my reach I will hurt him," Pereira said when revealing his fight strategy to Brazilian MMA Fighters. "And five rounds he won’t make it, five rounds? And I come close, you can see in the fights that I come close, I have a very good defence. He will want to attack or counterattack, but I can hurt him with my defence too.
"I saw in his fights that he kicks a lot and the guys don’t have the right time, the right time to block, you can hurt him with a block. The guy kicked, you blocked, maybe he won’t kick anymore. He’s got a big weapon and I can sort of eliminate it early on, I’ll be close to him, if he doesn’t hit me he’ll get beaten, and if he hits me he’ll get as tired as me.“
Pereira is the one and only fighter to have knocked Adesanya out cold during his illustrious career in combat sports, which will give the Brazilian huge confidence of boosting his record again. The rising star has won six consecutive fights since making his MMA debut, including his recent UFC win over contender Sean Strickland.
Who are you backing to win - Israel Adesanya or Alex Pereira? Let us know in the comments section below
Adesanya is relishing the opportunity to avenge his defeats but this time in the Octagon, where he has had huge success and has just one loss against Jan Blachowicz to his name. The Nigeria-born champion has admitted he is excited to use the smaller gloves in an arena with Pereira to finally get his vengeance.
"This isn’t kickboxing, this is mixed martial arts. These ain’t big pillow gloves, these are four ounce deadly weapons that I can’t wait to drive through his face," Adesanya said prior to confirmation of his clash with Pereira. "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."
