Alex Pereira is in the habit of letting his gym do the talking. On November 9 he posted sparring footage to his own account, and two days later he followed it with another batch. Championship Rounds, which reshared both clips, summed up the first one bluntly: “Alex Pereira is looking SHARP in new sparring footage,” the account wrote on X. MMA commentator Dovy pointed to a different emphasis in the work, writing on X that it showed “Alex Pereira working on his defence.”
That second observation is the more interesting one. Pereira (13-4, No. 6 heavyweight in Knockout Daily’s rankings) has never needed help convincing anyone he can hit. He started kickboxing in 2009, at 21, to get away from an alcohol addiction that had followed him since he was 12. He went on to hold Glory titles at middleweight and light heavyweight at the same time, then won UFC gold at middleweight and twice at light heavyweight. He trains out of Teixeira MMA & Fitness, and his last fight was June 14.
Defense matters against this particular opponent. Sergei Pavlovich (21-3, No. 7 heavyweight) has built his UFC run on first-round violence. He stopped Shamil Abdurakhimov, Derrick Lewis, Tai Tuivasa and Curtis Blaydes inside one round, with the Lewis and Tuivasa finishes coming in under a minute, before Tom Aspinall caught him with a counter right hand and knocked him out in Round 1 for the interim title at UFC 295 in November 2023. A Greco-Roman wrestler from age five in the village of Orlovsky in Rostov Oblast, Pavlovich is believed to carry the largest ape index of any active UFC fighter at 1.115. He fights out of Eagles MMA and last competed on May 30.
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So a striker who has spent his whole life walking forward is posting clips about keeping his hands up, ahead of a fight with a man whose reach makes the pocket a dangerous place to linger. Sparring footage proves very little on its own, and every camp releases the good rounds. But the choice of what to show tells you what a team is thinking about.
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Both men will be on the dais this Friday, November 13, at a joint UFC 335 and UFC 336 press conference, according to Championship Rounds, alongside Charles Oliveira, Diego Lopes, Joshua Van, Manel Kape, Carlos Prates and Michael Morales. Pereira and Pavlovich fight on December 12 at UFC 335, under the Oliveira vs. Lopes main event.
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