Kayla Harrison Impressed by UFC Champ Alex Pereira’s Judo Skill, Promises Belt Promotion Under One Condition

Since his debut in 2021, Alex Pereira has gone on to fight and win multiple titles. Pereira has also improved significantly as a martial artist, picking up new aspects of the game from his mentor Glover Teixeira as well as other fighters. The most recent addition to Pereira’s arsenal comes thanks to UFC’s new recruit, Kayla Harrison.

For the uninitiated, Harrison is a two-time Olympic gold medalist and one of the most dominant figures in the sport of Judo. In her training session with Pereira, Harrison can be seen teaching ‘Poatan’ how to perform a judo throw.

Fast forward to a few weeks later, a clip from Pereira’s training camp shows him performing the move fluently while sparring. This received a prompt reply from the Olympic gold medalist, who promised to promote ‘Poatan’ to a yellow belt if he were to throw his UFC 303 opponent, Jiri Procházka with the same technique.

“When he throws Jiri with this I will promote him to yellow belt.”

Pereira’s long frame has allowed him to generate enough torque to hit his opponents with a hooks that sound like baseball bats on contact with people’s faces. His world class kickboxing and devastating KO power has allowed him to sleep opponents, despite the perceived weaknesses in his game.

But now that he wants to go to heavyweight and become the UFC’s first three-division champion, there’s a good chance, he will get found out by champions like Jones, Stipe and Aspinall. It’s a stacked division with all around fighters and Poatan will need everything he can get to defeat those guys.

But before then, he will have to step in at UFC 303 on short notice again to save the day.

Poatan to save the day on short notice at UFC 303. 

Interestingly the first time Pereira and Prochazka fought was also on short notice after Jon Jones had pulled out of UFC 295.

Now, a year later, the two will be stepping in to fight in the main event of the biggest gate in company history following Conor McGregor’s 11th hour injury.

Pereira’s fight against Prochazka will be his ninth fight in the UFC and shockingly, his sixth championship fight. Pereira’s meteoric rise can be attributed to him fighting some very high profile opponents from the get go, like Israel Adesanya and defeating them convincingly.

So is he already a great of the sport? Or is he on his way there? Perhaps in a third belt in another weight class, lies the answer to that question.