Preview: UFC 295 ‘Prochazka vs. Pereira’

The Ultimate Fighting Championship’s annual November trip to New York is typically the highlight of the schedule, and despite continuing the trend of late-notice pay-per-view main events, UFC 295 on Saturday at Madison Square Garden lives up to that standard. A Jon Jones heavyweight title defense against Stipe Miocic in a fight mostly about legacy was initially slated as the marquee attraction, but an injury to the champion forced the UFC to pivot to an intriguing double headliner. Former light heavyweight champion Jiri Prochazka looks to reclaim the vacant title against onetime middleweight boss Alex Pereira in the new main event, while next heavyweights up Sergei Pavlovich and Tom Aspinall square off for an interim title in the co-feature. Those two bouts carry the freight, though the rest of the bunch should provide plenty of entertainment and intrigue. Mackenzie Dern gets a potential showcase against former strawweight champion Jessica Andrade, while altercations pairing Matt Frevola with Benoit St. Denis and Diego Lopes with Pat Sabatini seem guaranteed to ramp up the good times.

Now to the UFC 295 “Prochazka vs. Pereira” preview:

UFC Light Heavyweight Championship

#14 P4P | Jiri Prochazka (29-3-1, 3-0 UFC) vs. #10 P4P | Alex Pereira (8-2, 5-1 UFC)

ODDS: Pereira (-130), Prochazka (+110)

It is nice to see Prochazka make his long-awaited return after vacating the light heavyweight title due to a severe shoulder injury. Beyond bringing some much-needed entertainment to the proceedings, his comeback serves as a way for the division to essentially reset and pick up where it left off in the middle of 2022. Prochazka was expected to bring some fresh blood to the light heavyweight title picture when the UFC signed him in 2020, but it was unclear how far his natural talent would carry him. Prochazka is clearly an elite athlete with an impressive level of fluidity, but his unorthodox and defensively void style figured to give opposition a lot with which to work. Prochazka’s UFC debut against Volkan Oezdemir essentially told the story right from the jump. Oezdemir did well in an exciting fight until Prochazka suddenly sprang into action and closed the show with a knockout. Prochazka followed a similar script against former title contender Dominick Reyes in 2021. Reyes found plenty of success and seemingly even scored a flash knockout of “BJP” with an upkick, but Prochazka persevered and uncorked a spinning elbow that ranks among the most brutal finishes in recent memory. Those two wins made the Czech fighter the top contender in a wide-open division, and his title shot finally came against Glover Teixeira in June 2022. The fight figured to be a quick race to a finish—with either Prochazka scoring the quick knockout or Teixeira surviving to find a finish on the ground—so naturally, the two went just short of 25 minutes in one of the best fights of the year. It was a back-and-forth war that saw both men come back from the brink of destruction until Prochazka suddenly clamped on a fight-ending submission. The fight was excellent enough that a rematch was booked for the following December, but the good vibes did not last long thanks to that shoulder injury, which in turn led to Prochazka vacating the title. In retrospect, he probably should not have bothered. Jan Blachowicz and Magomed Ankalaev were tabbed to fight for the vacant title, but that fight ended in an uninspiring draw, leaving the belt vacant and causing the UFC to pivot to Teixeira facing Jamahal Hill. The situation was temporarily stable when Hill won the title, but then he was also forced to vacate the throne due to injury. The whole saga went on long enough that things have circled back to Prochazka, though he faces a light heavyweight contender that was not on anyone’s radar a year and a half ago: a former middleweight champion and Teixeira protege in Pereira.

It feels funny to say about someone poised to become a two-division UFC champion after just seven fights, but it does feel like Pereira has not had a fully smooth transition from kickboxing to mixed martial arts. Yet “Poatan” is so good at what he does that none of that has mattered much. Given that Pereira had a pre-existing history with former middleweight champion Israel Adesanya, it made sense that the UFC would look to rush the Brazilian into a title shot as soon as he proved his ability to hang in mixed martial arts. Indeed, the UFC gave him a fairly quick and easy glidepath to a title fight that got him to the Adesanya fight in roughly a year’s time. Andreas Michailidis and Bruno Silva were able to find some success wrestling with Pereira—a poor sign for whenever the UFC decided to match him with an effective wrestler—but his ability on the feet led him to victory in both bouts before a first-round knockout of Sean Strickland punched his ticket to an Adesanya title fight. Pereira’s two fights with Adesanya were a fun bit of storytelling. The first was a go-everywhere encounter that Adesanya seemed to have in hand up until the point that Pereira knocked him out; the second saw Adesanya win his title back with a cathartic come-from-behind knockout of his own. With that story told, Pereira moved up to light heavyweight to take on Jan Blachowicz in July—a fight that marked the start of a new era for the Brazilian. Beyond the change in weight class, the proverbial kid gloves were off with the UFC matching Pereira against someone clearly capable of exploiting his shortcomings. Once again, those weaknesses in Pereira’s game may have been apparent, but they did not keep him from victory. Blachowicz outwrestled Pereira handily in the first round, only to tire and settle into a slow-paced striking match that let the Brazilian eke out a decision win.

That does not figure to be the dynamic here, unless something has suddenly gone wrong with Prochazka during his injury layoff. Wrestling is never Prochazka’s primary game plan, and while there might be a feeling-out process early, the pace does not figure to slow down once things get going. Between the size parity and Prochazka’s combination of unorthodox offensive dynamism and subpar defense, this feels like a race to a finish. If Prochazka can actually absorb what would typically be a Pereira knockout blow, he figures to come firing back with something that could catch the Brazilian off-guard—or even wind up repeating the Teixeira fight and snatching a sudden submission at some point during an exchange. The read is that once things officially pop off, Prochazka should hold up as the better of the two in terms of shot-for-shot durability. With that said, this is a coinflip of a fight that is more about the display of high-stakes violence than any sort of analysis of the result. The pick is Prochazka via second-round knockout.

Jump To »
Prochazka vs. Pereira
Aspinall vs. Pavlovich
Dern vs. Andrade
St. Denis vs. Frevola
Sabatini vs. Lopes
The Prelims