Pereira seeks revenge at UFC 320: Will history repeat itself against Ankalaev?

Pereira Seeks Revenge: Double Challenge in UFC

In the world of mixed martial arts (MMA), conquering an opponent is a difficult task. However, Alex Pereira will face two significant challenges in his attempt to regain the UFC light heavyweight championship this Saturday at UFC 320. His main objective will be Magomed Ankalaev, who took the title from him in March. The second obstacle Pereira will have to overcome is the history of the UFC regarding immediate rematches. The Ankalaev-Pereira 2 fight will mark the first fight for both fighters since the change of hands of the belt. Former UFC champions have not performed well in immediate rematches. Of the 16 fights of this type in the modern era of the promotion (since November 2000), only four former champions have managed to regain the title. Pereira might be familiar with this disheartening statistic, as he participated in one of those four triumphant rematches. Or perhaps he has tried to forget the night of April 2023, when he witnessed the most recent success of a former UFC champion. In November 2022, five months after snatching the middleweight title from Israel Adesanya, Pereira had every reason to be confident heading into the rematch. His knockout victory at UFC 281 had been his third victory over Adesanya in different combat sports. Pereira had defeated Adesanya twice in kickboxing, including the only knockout loss in Adesanya’s 80-fight kickboxing career. I know how to beat him. I know how he fights, I know how he works. I think if I beat him this Saturday, I will never face him again. Adesanya, for his part, assumed the role of challenger in the rematch. Ignoring that he was again the favorite in the betting, he knew that the fans had seen him stopped in the first encounter.

I feel like I’m the underdog in this fight. I feel like everyone is writing me off. I feel like, because of the result of the last fight, people have goldfish memories. They’ve forgotten what I’ve done in this game. They forgot who I am. And it’s time to remind people how great I am.

Israel Adesanya

Adesanya certainly reminded Pereira of it. At the end of the second round, in a stand-up battle, while covering against the cage, Adesanya connected two right hands that stopped Pereira in his tracks. Just when “The Last Stylebender” seemed to be in trouble, he became the problem. The knockout victory made Adesanya champion again, and he felt like a new man.

By defeating me, he made me a better fighter, a better person. In this camp, I didn’t waste time. If you know me, you know I like to go on vacation, but… I stuck to the routine and pushed myself.

Israel Adesanya

This weekend, Pereira has the opportunity to show what he learned from the first fight against Ankalaev. Conventional wisdom before the first encounter said that he would be in trouble against Ankalaev’s suffocating wrestling, but Pereira stopped the Russian’s 12 takedown attempts. Conventional wisdom also held that a stand-up fight would be advantageous for Pereira, but Ankalaev grew stronger in the striking exchanges as the fight went on and was rewarded with a unanimous decision in his favor. What did Pereira learn from the defeat? Less than seven months later, has he had enough time to implement the necessary adjustments to change course in the rematch? Is his confidence still bruised and does he need more time to rejuvenate? Pereira might think he knows the answers to those questions, but not yet. He and the fans will find out on Saturday. Ankalaev also doesn’t know the answers, but he said the only thing that will change in the rematch is that it will be an easier victory for him. Calling 38-year-old Pereira “too old to make substantial changes”, Ankalaev told reporters, “I don’t think even he believes that if he finds a different game plan or changes something, he could beat me. I just think he’s going to go out to make good money, just for the check.”

The first UFC champion dethroned to fight in an immediate rematch was Randy Couture, who has left his mark on countless chapters of UFC history. In 2004, after having reigned twice at heavyweight and in his first stint as light heavyweight champion, Couture headlined UFC 46 against Vitor Belfort, whom he had knocked out seven years earlier, when Belfort was only 20 years old. Belfort was an experienced veteran entering his second fight and was on a good streak, winning in seven of his last eight fights. This was a highly anticipated and long-awaited title clash. Expectations vanished in the first few seconds, when a Belfort blow grazed Couture’s left eye and inflicted a corneal abrasion. The referee noticed the compromised fighter and ended the match in an unsatisfactory 49 seconds, putting Belfort on an emotional rollercoaster. He was the new champion, which was something to celebrate, but this was not how he wanted to win the belt. When the topic of a rematch came up in his post-fight interview, Belfort was in total agreement. “He deserves a rematch,” Belfort said, sounding almost apologetic. “Randy is still a champion to me. He will always be a champion.” That gesture, as humble and kind as it was, was finally filed in the “be careful what you wish for” department. Seven months later, at UFC 49, Couture battered Belfort from start to brutal finish, accumulating 14 minutes and 6 seconds of control time in a fight that lasted only 15 minutes. Couture landed 50 significant strikes to Belfort’s three, battering and bloodying the resilient but flaccid Brazilian. And when the referee, following the advice of the cage doctor, stopped the beating at the end of the third round, Couture was champion again, at 41 years old. “Fortunately, we get smarter as we get older,” he joked during the post-fight interview, with his white shorts covered in Belfort’s blood. “I don’t do many things I used to do when I was younger. … I feel better than I have in my entire life.” For 18 years, Couture would remain the only dethroned UFC champion to win the belt in an immediate rematch. Ten other former champions, including legends like Anderson Silva and José Aldo, tried to be like “The Natural”, but failed. Finally, Deiveson Figueiredo broke through in 2022, reclaiming the men’s flyweight title by winning a unanimous decision in a rematch with Brandon Moreno, who had choked him out seven months earlier. By matching Couture’s achievement, Figueredo apparently opened the floodgates. In the 3 and a half years since he became the second fighter in modern UFC history to regain a title in an immediate rematch, four others have tried and two have succeeded: Adesanya and Amanda Nunes, both in 2022. “The Lioness” regained the women’s bantamweight title from Julianna Peña at UFC 277, knocking her down three times and scoring six takedowns in a one-sided beating that one judge scored with a resounding 50-43. But there have been many more failures than successes, often surprisingly. After Frankie Edgar knocked down the 11-to-1 betting favorite, BJ Penn, in 2010 to capture the lightweight belt, you knew they weren’t done with each other. It had been a very close fight that went the distance, and Penn was a two-division champion with the mystique of an MMA legend. A rematch was booked for four months later at UFC 118, and Penn, despite being the challenger this time, was once again the bookmakers’ favorite. Edgar didn’t fight like a loser, however, because he knew better.

For the rematch, my mindset was different. Going into the first fight, I believed I could beat BJ. I didn’t know, but I believed. Going into the second fight, I knew I could. I think that’s why the gap between us was much bigger the second time.

Frankie Edgar

The gap was huge. Edgar nearly tripled Penn’s total strike output and won every round on all three scorecards, retaining his title and ensuring that, as he later said, “the lightweight division would continue without BJ Penn.” Several other formerly dominant ex-champions have had cruel accounts when trying to regain their mojo immediately after. The most recent dethroned champion to fight in an immediate rematch was Valentina Shevchenko, who lost the women’s flyweight championship to Alexa Grasso in 2023 in a major upset. Shevchenko, the longest reigning champion in the UFC at the time, was a more than 6-to-1 betting favorite, and fought as such. For three rounds, Shevchenko led on all scorecards. But at the end of the fourth, she turned to kick, and Grasso secured Shevchenko’s back and quickly secured a submission. The shocking finish, the third-biggest upset in a UFC women’s championship fight, ended Shevchenko’s streak of seven consecutive title defenses.

Definitely an immediate rematch, because I know I was winning the fight.

Valentina Shevchenko

She was definitely ahead according to the judges, but that didn’t help her in the rematch six months later. Shevchenko had her moments, but so did Grasso, and the fight ended in a split draw, with Grasso retaining the title. But not for long. Fight organizers booked a third consecutive meeting at UFC 306 last September, and Shevchenko won a unanimous decision to regain the gold. It is true that redemption did not come for Shevchenko in the fight immediately after losing the belt. But at least she returned to the promised land eventually. That has not been the case for others. Joanna Jedrzejczyk was an undefeated strawweight champion and a 6-to-1 betting favorite for her 2017 title defense against Rose Namajunas. But the challenger was not intimidated by Jedrzejczyk’s menacing frown. Namajunas knocked her down with a right hand less than two minutes into the fight, then finished Jedrzejczyk with a left hook knockdown and ground and pound (provoking Daniel Cormier’s famous exclamation, “Thug Rose! Thug Rose! Thug Rose!”). When they fought again five months later at UFC 223, Namajunas was again an underdog. But she was also a winner again, this time going five rounds and taking a clear decision to retain the belt. Jedrzejczyk, like some other once-dominant former champions, had a hard time coming to terms with the fall in two parts. After the rematch, she had harsh words not only for “Thug Rose” but for the 115-pound division as a whole. “They can’t compare to me,” she said. “Everyone is jealous and talks too much all the time. I tell them: bow down. I am the queen.” The wounded self-esteem of a dethroned champion feels like part of what is behind the impulse for immediate rematches. Not everyone is as vocal as Jedrzejczyk, but there is something disorienting about being at the top of the game and then being knocked down. An immediate rematch can clear things up. Or not.

Despite the terrible history of redemption seekers, immediate championship rematches keep coming. It makes sense in a sport where the contender status is ephemeral. If a former champion is offered the opportunity to regain the belt, there is no better time than the present. Within the attention span of MMA, one can be here today and gone tomorrow.

So, while Ankalaev will be the one putting the belt on the line on Saturday, Pereira will also have something at stake: his aura. After eight of his previous 10 UFC fights ended by finish, including several worthy of highlight reels, Ankalaev’s first fight was relatively quiet. There were no takedowns, no knockdowns, no clear supremacy established beyond the close scorecards. By repeating it immediately, can Pereira make it seem more like a Pereira fight? And can he overcome both the new champion and the 4-11-1?