UFC light heavyweight champion Alex Pereira has become one of the UFC’s biggest stars in an extremely short amount of time, but welterweight contender Joaquin Buckley thinks he’s making the sport look ‘stupid’.
After joining the promotion in 2021, Alex Pereira has rapidly emerged as one of the biggest stars in combat sports, having won both the UFC middleweight and light heavyweight titles in just three years.
Not only that, but this year specifically, ‘Poatan’ has dug the promotion out of extremely difficult positions, filling in for fights on short notice to save both UFC 300 and UFC 303.
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Joaquin Buckley accuses Alex Pereira of making the sport look ‘stupid’
Despite being one of the favorites amongst fans, the 37-year-old has been respectfully slammed by number 11 ranked welterweight contender, Joaquin Buckley.
‘New Mansa’ was building quite the following for himself after a run of extremely impressive performances, but after calling out Conor McGregor following his recent win over Nursulton Ruziboev, he seems to have lost momentum.
Possibly in an attempt to recapture the attention, the 30-year-old has accused ‘Poatan’ of making the sport look ‘stupid’ and ‘reta*ded’ because of how quickly he has become a star at the top of MMA.
“No disrespect to Alex Pereira because I’m a fan of that motherf***** right now, that s*** is crazy what he’s doing, but it’s still like, how is he able to do that? It makes (MMA) look stupid and reta*ded,” Buckley told Parry Punch.
“You’ve got guys now from different professions that are like ‘Ah yeah I can do that s***’ and become the UFC champion too, it shouldn’t be like that. I’m not taking away from Alex Pereira, he might be working his ass off every motherf****** day to get there.
“But when you have someone that has solely trained MMA in itself and his whole goal as he got started in combat was to be a UFC fighter but then you’ve got another guy who’s coming over transitioning from a different sport still able to beat you, that’s a problem. I don’t think a lot of guys are applying themselves like they should,” Buckley continued.
Alex Pereira’s next move unknown with Magomed Ankalaev booked in another fight
The reigning 205lb champion was assumed to be defending his title against Russian contender, Magomed Ankalaev next, but bizarrely, the UFC announced last week that Ankalaev will take on Aleksandar Rakic at UFC 308.
With that, the promotion told Ankalaev and his management that they have different plans for ‘Poatan’, leaving fans bemused.
The 37-year-old has previously hinted at moving up to heavyweight to try and win a title in his third weight class, however, he stated he would likely do so after defending his title against Ankalaev.
Heavyweight champion, Jon Jones, is likely to defend his title against Stipe Miocic in November, with interim champion Tom Aspinal coming after that.
Although Aspinall has claimed he will now wait for his next fight to be for the undisputed title instead of defending his interim title again, he has previously flirted with the idea of fighting the Brazilian champion, so the UFC could be working on making that fight.
UFC is handling that all by themselves.
A lot of it is down to fast tracking and careful matchmaking though, and in two divisions that are at a low point. Theres a good chance that if Poatan had had to come up the traditional way he would have run into someone who would have wrestlefucked him before he got close to a title shot.
No fucking way would he have been top 5 at LHW a decade ago either.
He’s right.
I actually agree with him too… how else can you explain a 27 year old Kickboxer with 0 MMA fights deciding to step in to MMA that late in the game and then 13 fights later… where he literally loses 2 of them (even with favorable matchmaking avoiding wrestlers)… goes 11-2, wins 2 Divisional Titles, and has people saying he is the Face of the Sport?
All credit to Poatan he is an exceptional combat sport athlete but either he is UFC Jesus or he is making this generation’s MW’s and LHW’s look pretty stupid. I think it’s the latter.
Kickboxing directly translates to MMA, especially when pitted almost exclusively against opponents who will play to that strength.
Would it be surprising if Jordan Burroughs entered MMA, fought nothing but opponents trying to wrestle him, and won? Same thing here.
Those belt tats are whack.
You have them on your mantel ? ? Why get them tatted on you. . Oh well
I think it’s even more surprising in this case because the track record by the numbers has shown that pure Wrestlers have more often translated to becoming UFC Champions than pure Kickboxers so I would be less surprised if a 27 year old Olympic Gold Medalist like Burroughs decided to go into MMA, with 0 striking miles on him, and fought only wrestlers and won. That wouldn’t be surprising to me.
What does surprise me is a 27 year old Kickboxer, who I had seen compete prior to his MMA Career live and lose in his sport, then switches sports relatively late in life and becomes a 2 Division Champion and the face of the sport. That is more surprising to me even with his path avoiding Wrestlers but including UFC Champions. I just think it makes the MW’s and LHW’s of this generation look bad.
It’s both, but MW and LHW of this generation are definitely weak, especially LHW. That’s obvious from Anthony Smith being highly ranked for years. It doesn’t help that they also let a lot of talent in their prime go to Bellator - Bader, Davis, Anderson, Mousasi, etc, and never pursued a bunch of other.
But Cro Cop was around that same age when he moved to MMA, so it’s not unheard of for a top kickboxer to successfully transition. I think top kickboxers just had a strong org to stay in in the past so we never saw many of them fully dedicate themselves to MMA, but they can do it as well as any other style.
Lawlers was the only one I was OK with.
Cro Cop is the best comparison but he was more of an exception than the rule for an “older" kickboxer to step in another sport relatively late and even in his case he was a single Division (albeit HW) Contender vs Poatan being a 2 Division Champion. Poatan is now campaigning for a 3rd Division Title shot at HW too now so it is really unprecedented in how bad he is making these current Divisions look in my opinion.
