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USA Today Sports Media Group
USA Today Sports Media Group
Sport
Fernanda Prates

Meet Michel Pereira, the moonsaulting MMA fighter aiming ‘to become the UFC’s showman’

Before you ask: No, Michel Pereira is not trained in capoeira. He’s taken a pair of classes, and that’s pretty much it.

And, no, he doesn’t have any gymnastics experience, either.

Pereira does have a background in karate, though. He started training when he was 12. But while we’ve seen some eye-popping moves from other karate-based MMA fighters, like Bellator’s Lyoto Machida or the UFC’s Michelle Waterson, we hadn’t quite seen anyone attack an opponent with, say, moonsaults.

So, asked to explain where exactly he gets the type of moves that he displayed during this past weekend’s Road FC 52, Pereira (22-9) can’t offer much more than it’s “a gift that God gave me.” The 25-year-old believes that theory finds further evidence in the fact that he didn’t even practice his acrobatics in training at first.

Now, aware of the dangers brought on by his unusual style, he does practice his leaps and jumps beforehand. Once the cage door closes, though, the best way Pereira can explain it is that the moves just come enter his brain. And then he does them.

“You can’t think, ‘I’m going to do this,’” Pereira told MMAjunkie on Wednesday in Portuguese. “It just comes, and you can’t even think whether you’re going to do it or not. Because, if I think about it, I won’t do it. Because it’s very dangerous. It makes my fights dangerous to myself, not just my opponent. I can hurt myself, fall on my head, break a leg or an arm.

“I get very tired, but it’s while doing my own things. So the fight becomes dangerous on two ends: because of my opponent and because I do so many things.”

Basically: Children, don’t try this at home.

After all, Pereira is a trained martial artist who’s been competing in professional MMA since he was 17 – despite what the fake ID that he had to use for his debut said. And the stunts had long been with him, as proven by the fact that his official “Demolisher” nickname sometimes gives way to “Showman” or “Showtime.”

But none of the attention that Pereira has received in the past compares to what happened after this past weekend’s openweight bout with Dae-Sung Kim, amid Road FC’s million-dollar tournament.

“I finished fighting, and I started taking a bunch of pictures,” Pereira said. “I got dressed and went (back out to watch) the event. When people saw me, I couldn’t walk because there were so many people taking pictures. I couldn’t watch the event, because they came and the event stopped. I was even asked to leave the place, to watch, because I wanted to watch the fights. They asked me to leave because I was stopping the event, because the Koreans were eager to get pictures with me. I had to walk around in hiding to be able to watch the fights, because if they saw me, it would stop the event.”

And that was just inside the arena. Outside of it, too, things got “a little crazy” for the Brazilian fighter, who saw his moves taking over headlines and social media with descriptors like “ninja,” “nutcase” and “thug life” – all said affectionally, of course – attached to them.

A few days after the match, as he waited to board a plane from Japan – where he’s lived for the past year – to take some vacation in his native Brazil, Pereira was still trying to grasp the newfound attention.

“It was all very incredible,” Pereira said. “But very different, too. It’s something that I’m still – because it’s all so new, I’m not believing it yet. I’m still processing all of it.”

Not like that’s a bad thing.

Sure, a portion of the internet might have wondered if what he was doing inside that cage was even, you know, legal within MMA rules. Probably, there were some who struggled to understand what the hell they were even watching in the first place. There was one consensus, though: Whatever it was, it was pretty awesome.

Considering the opinions he’d heard in the past, that’s some welcome validation.

“All these things that I did, people used to be against,” Pereira said. “I went against the grain. Everyone said it was showing off, that it was clown stuff. I had to stand up against a lot of people and to hear many things that weren’t very nice. But I knew what I was doing. I knew that was the path. People put me down because of that way of fighting. ‘Michel, you have to knock them out, you have to submit them, you play around too much.’

“I already knew I was going to make it to my goal, which is the UFC. But, that way, I knew I would get there sooner. That it would make that path shorter. So I had to fight against that, against people getting me down, telling me to stop doing it.”

And, as far as the aforementioned goal goes, things seem to be shaping up nicely.

“Bellator called me,” Pereira said. “They wanted to sign me. But I turned it down, because my dream is to go to the UFC. And we’re negotiating with the UFC. … I think, in two or three days, I’ll be able to say I’ve made it to the UFC. ”

Each fight brings its own challenges, of course, and Pereira knows it won’t always be possible to pull off all of his flashy stunts. Take the fight with Kim, for instance: Pereira ultimately won via TKO, but it was a rather traditional knee to the face that did it.

Amid all the razzle-dazzle, Pereira also trusts his skills, his training and his effort to be able to hang with the best – which, if he does make it to the UFC, he says that could happen in either the 170 or 185-pound division.

He has one focus, though, and it’s to “always fight to put on a show.” In the octagon, Pereira guarantees it wouldn’t be different.

“I have this mentality that, nowadays, the UFC is getting a little boring,” Pereira said. “Bellator, too. Athletes today are very concerned about winning. They think only about the victory. Not me, I think differently. I think about the show. People pay expensive tickets to see something they enjoy watching. Like back in the day, when there was Anderson Silva. Vitor Belfort, Jon Jones, they put on shows. Now, fighters are losing that. They’re focused only on winning, they don’t care what you think about their fights – if it will be good, if it will be bad.

“I think that I have to have a good performance, and the win will come as consequence. … My goal is to become the UFC’s showman. It’s one of my goals, to carry that status: ‘Who’s the showman of the UFC? It’s Michel.’ I want to put on a show for the audience and try to bring this back among the athletes, as well.”

For more on upcoming MMA schedule, check out the MMA Rumors section of the site.

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