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Andreas Hale, ESPN
When Alex Pereira steps into the Octagon to defend the light heavyweight championship against Khalil Rountree at UFC 307 on Oct. 5, it will be his third title fight in under six months.
That pace might be stunning to most — in fact, it makes Pereira the most active champion in UFC history at age 37 — but “Poatan” told ESPN on Friday that he wanted to “fight all the time” now that he was fully healthy after an injury-plagued 2023.
Pereira revealed he had been fighting through a knee injury he sustained in training camp for his July 2023 fight against former champion Jan Blachowicz.
“The knee had come out of place and I had to stop training,” Pereira told ESPN through an interpreter. “We, as a camp, thought about canceling the fight but pushed through. During training, I had to stop to put the knee back in place. I didn’t know if my knee was going to surrender or not.”
Pereira went through with the fight against Blachowicz but was “very, very, very limited.” He escaped with a split-decision victory, but it was far from the explosive performance fans were accustomed to seeing from him.
Pereira was scheduled to have knee surgery in December, but the UFC offered him the opportunity to challenge for the vacant light heavyweight title against Jiri Prochazka in November. Pereira decided to compete again with the injured knee and stopped Prochazka in the second round to become the fastest two-division champion in UFC history.
“When I was throwing elbows on Jiri, after the knockout I did a front roll,” he said. “The front roll wasn’t me celebrating, it was me scared to post on the leg because it may have surrendered for good.”
The ability to become a two-division champion on a bad knee made Pereira think about how devastating he would be when healthy.
Pereira quietly had surgery in December and returned to action at UFC 300 in April, when he successfully defended the title against Jamahal Hill with a first-round knockout. Pereira quickly returned to headline UFC 303 in June in a rematch with Prochazka on two weeks’ notice when Conor McGregor was forced off the card because of a toe injury. Pereira turned in another highlight-reel knockout by finishing Prochazka with a head kick in the second round.
After the fight, Pereira said on his YouTube channel he would take some time off and target a December return. Instead, he will fight Rountree and attempt to make his third defense of the light heavyweight championship in 176 days.
“I was able to fight with such bad conditions with my leg, and now that I have had the surgery and am 100 percent healthy, I want to fight all the time,” Pereira said.
Pereira is still entertaining a move back down to middleweight to challenge 185-pound titleholder Dricus Du Plessis. He also hasn’t ruled out a move to heavyweight.
When asked if he would finally take some time off after UFC 307, Pereira was noncommital.
“Bro, I’m not going to respond to that because it is hard to say,” he said. “I don’t know.”