Joe Rogan rarely sounds nervous about Alex Pereira. During Saturday’s UFC 332 broadcast he sounded close to it, and he has every reason.
Pereira (13-4 MMA, 10-3 UFC) gets his second shot at heavyweight in the UFC 335 co-main event on Dec. 12 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. He’ll face Sergei Pavlovich (20-3 MMA, 9-3 UFC) over five rounds. Rogan, previewing the card as MMA Junkie reported, summed up the problem in one line: “Pavlovich is a huge, huge heavyweight with gigantic power and fantastic boxing.”
I’ll go further than Rogan did. Pereira picked the most dangerous possible road back to Ciryl Gane, and the betting market is right to make him the underdog. I also love him for picking it.
The Gane loss still hangs over this fight
Quick refresher. In June at UFC Freedom 250, Pereira fought Gane for the interim heavyweight title with real history on the table. A win would have made him the first fighter in UFC history to hold a version of a title in three weight classes. Instead Gane stopped him by second-round TKO.
Pereira didn’t take it quietly. He protested the result, claiming illegal strikes, and even threatened to retire from MMA over safety concerns. That’s a heavy bag of emotions to drag into a camp, and the next guy waiting for him is a knockout artist Rogan called huge twice in the same sentence.
Most fighters coming off a finish, especially one they think was dirty, get a tune-up. A ranked guy who’s game but beatable. Pereira went the other way. Rogan put it plainly on the broadcast, saying “the man won’t go back to light heavyweight,” and explaining that Pereira wants Gane again. Then came the catch: “he’s got to go through Sergei Pavlovich to get it, and that’s a tough task.”
I’ve spent years complaining about fighters who duck. Pereira is doing the opposite. A former two-division champion could slide back down to 205 and nobody would blink. He’s choosing the fight that could end his heavyweight project in one exchange.
Pavlovich is the wrong guy to rebuild against
A rebuild fight usually means padding a record. Look at what Pavlovich has done lately. He dropped back-to-back fights to Alexander Volkov and Tom Aspinall, which would have sent plenty of heavyweights into a career spiral. He responded with three straight wins. That’s a guy who took the worst stretch of his UFC run and turned it into a streak, and now he gets a former champ with a big name and a recent loss walking into his range.
DraftKings has Pavlovich at -166 and Pereira at +140. MMA Junkie called Pavlovich a slight favorite, and on paper that’s fair, but do the math and the line implies Pavlovich wins this roughly 62% of the time. For a guy who held two UFC belts, being a plus-money dog in his own comeback fight tells you how much the Gane result changed the conversation.
I think the oddsmakers have it right. Rogan’s scouting report lines up with the numbers. Gigantic power, fantastic boxing, five rounds to find the button. Pereira is the one who still has to prove the heavyweight version of himself can absorb what the big boys throw, and Pavlovich is about the worst possible professor for that lesson.
And the card around it rules
The UFC stacked this one. In the main event, Charles Oliveira (37-11 MMA, 25-11 UFC) defends his BMF title against Diego Lopes (28-8 MMA, 7-3 UFC), who is making his lightweight debut. Rogan said he loves Lopes at 155, pointing to his knockout of Steve Garcia on the White House lawn, and called Oliveira vs. Lopes a fight that “should be a barnburner.”
Then the broadcast team got blindsided by a third announcement, Joe Pyfer (16-3 MMA, 7-1 UFC) vs. Bo Nickal (9-1 MMA, 6-1 UFC). Rogan was clearly into it: “I like it a lot.” He added that Pyfer “has nuclear power” and called Nickal “a spectacular talent.” I’m with him. That’s a matchup with actual heat behind it, and nobody had to stage a fake shoving match to sell it.
Still, the co-main is the fight that tells us the most. If Pavlovich lands clean, the heavyweight Pereira experiment is probably over, and the retirement talk from June comes roaring back. If Pereira wins, he gets the Gane rematch he keeps asking for, the three-division chase is alive again, and that +140 starts looking like the steal of the year.
My pick is Pavlovich, because the line and Rogan are both pointing the same direction and I’m not dumb enough to argue with both. But I’ll be watching Pereira’s walkout on Dec. 12 on Paramount+ with a lot of respect for a guy who refused to take the easy fight.
