Sherdog’s 2022 Fighter of the Year

Alex Pereira made the jump from person of interest to undisputed Ultimate Fighting Championship middleweight titleholder in a matter of months. In hindsight, it was more of a cosmic leap.

Pereira—who beat out Larissa Pacheco, Alexander Volkanovski, Islam Makhachev and Sergei Pavlovich for Sherdog’s “Fighter of the Year” honors—went a perfect 3-0 in 2022, beating Bruno Silva and Sean Strickland before he completed his climb to the 185-pound summit by dethroning Israel Adesanya in just his eighth professional mixed martial arts bout. It took him a shade under 40 minutes of cage time to alter the direction of an entire division.

The final leg of Pereira’s journey was easily the most satisfying, as the Teixeira MMA-trained Brazilian unseated Adesanya with punches and laid claim to the middleweight crown in the fifth round of their UFC 281 headliner on Nov. 12 at Madison Square Garden in New York. “The Last Stylebender” checked out 2:01 into Round 5, his reign atop the 185-pound weight class having concluded after 1,134 days. The moment was not lost on Pereira.

“This is the main one, for sure,” he said through a translator at the post-fight press conference. “All the other ones are important, but due to the history and everything, this is my main win.”

Pereira traveled a treacherous road to get there. Adesanya nearly finished him at the end of the first round, where he cracked the Glover Teixeira protégé with an overhand right and followed it with a crushing left hook as the horn sounded. A dazed Pereira recovered during the one-minute respite that followed and rebounded with a strong showing in Round 2, but it proved to be a wake-up call of sorts.

“It hurt me a lot,” Pereira said. “I’m not going to lie. With that said, I think it helped me stay sharper, stay with it, and then I started to put more pressure [on him] and also make him work more, which I think allowed me to get him a little more tired, too.”

Even so, Pereira lost his way as the battle unfolded, his movements becoming increasingly labored after the champion surprised him with a takedown and grinded away for nearly four minutes in the middle stanza. After a back-and-forth Round 4, he entered the final five minutes believing he needed a finish. The man to whom Pereira has entrusted his career told him as much.

“I knew it was going to be a very hard fight,” he said. “I tried to pace myself, but going into the last round, my corners and Glover kept it real with me. I looked at him and said, ‘Do I have to knock him out?’ And Glover said, ‘You do have to knock him out.’ And then I said, ‘OK, let’s do it.’”

Adesanya failed to manage distance properly, allowed the challenger to back him to the fence and paid a steep price for his miscalculation. Pereira followed a slashing right uppercut with a jarring left hook that set the City Kickboxing superstar on unsteady legs. He then unleashed with power shots from both hands as Adesanya slouched forward in a defenseless posture and left his head exposed, prompting referee Marc Goddard to call for the stoppage. The deposed champion did not agree with Goddard’s decision to intervene.

“My ego would say at least let me go out on my shield,” Adesanya said, “but I don’t think I would have gone out because I was still there. I’ve seen worse stoppages. Bring back Steve Mazzagatti. I would have been fine. He might have won that round, but I’d still be champion.”

Most will recall that Pereira had been viewed as a threat to Adesanya the moment he arrived in the UFC thanks to his two victories over “The Last Stylebender” as a kickboxer. Getting to him was thought to be the difficult part. Pereira made his Octagon debut on Nov. 6, 2021 and cut down Andreas Michailidis with a flying knee and follow-up punches in the second round of their pairing on the UFC 268 undercard. The assignment was not without adversity, as Michailidis took down the Brazilian twice in the first round. Pereira nevertheless emerged with his hand raised, setting the stage for his unforgettable 2022 campaign.

“Poatan” started his march to the top with his first main card assignment at UFC Fight Night 203, where he took a unanimous decision from Silva on March 12 at the UFC Apex in Las Vegas. Pereira attacked the body with kicks, punched effectively in combination and negated two completed takedowns from the former M-1 Global champion—they amounted to less than two minutes of control time. He outstruck Silva in every round but hit the accelerator in the third, where he connected with 81 total strikes, absorbed only 21 in return and denied all five of the takedowns attempted against him. All three judges scored it 30-27 for Pereira, who then set his sights on Adesanya from afar.

“Honestly, the moment he found out I signed here, I believe he was worried about me,” he said. “He knows my potential, and he knows how far I can get.”

One more hurdle stood between Pereira and Adesanya, and he cleared it with room to spare. He needed a little more than half a round to bludgeon Strickland with punches in their UFC 276 showcase on July 2 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. Pereira drew the curtain 2:36 into Round 1, handing the onetime King of the Cage champion his first loss in four years while simultaneously cementing himself as the No. 1 contender at 185 pounds.

“You never want to be someone’s highlight,” Strickland said, “but that’s the game we play.”

Some four months later, Pereira had the sport’s biggest fish in the sport’s biggest pond at his mercy on the end of his line, gaff in hand.