Alex Pereira actually contemplated a move to heavyweight prior to his interim title fight against Ciryl Gane at the UFC White House card, but the timing couldn’t have been better for his transition as he attempts to become the first ever three-division champion in promotional history.
After already capturing belts at light heavyweight and middleweight, Pereira was teasing his interest in fighting at heavyweight and it turns out there were talks about him making that move back in January when the UFC first debuted on Paramount. With heavyweight champion Tom Aspinall still out of action dealing with an eye injury, the UFC was anxious to hand out an interim title with Pereira involved in that fight.
“Well, I think the right moment is now,” Pereira told Paramount about the timing for his move to heavyweight. “At certain points before but I don’t really remember when we could have moved up to heavyweight but it would have felt a bit forced. Not now. Now it’s happening very naturally, in a perfect fight.
“This fight was supposed to happen earlier, at the first event of the year but for a few reasons it didn’t happen and now this has become a big moment.”
When he first started packing on the pounds, Pereira not only became a heavyweight, but he very nearly reached the limit for the division at 265 pounds.
Now that he’s almost through his training camp, the former two-division UFC champion has found the perfect sweet spot for his fight against Gane on June 14.
“Around [242 pounds],” Pereira said about how much he’ll weigh on fight night. “Not too heavy, I was heavier before though. I got up to [258 pounds] and then I gradually started cutting back down.”
In a crazy twist, Pereira revealed that what he expects to weigh for the UFC White House card is effectively where he started his cuts to get down to light heavyweight.
“I was at [242 pounds], then I dropped to [205 pounds],” Pereira said. “Now doing the math is difficult.”
While he’s never missed weight and Pereira has rarely even been afforded the extra one-pound allowance for non-title fights, he definitely felt the toll those cuts were taking on his body.
Now that he’s at heavyweight, Pereira is much happier and his full focus can stay on getting ready for the fight against Gane rather than a potential battle with the scale.
“It helps me a lot because of my diet. I don’t have that concern anymore,” Pereira said. “When I was a middleweight, it was much more complicated. About a month before the fight, I had to cut back heavily on food, maybe even feel a bit weaker.
“The weight cut was pretty aggressive. Now I don’t have that concern anymore and for me, that’s very important.”
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