UFC light heavyweight champion Alex Pereira is an anomaly. Despite barely speaking English, he’s managed to capture an audience of millions that needs subtitles and translators to understand him, making him one of the biggest stars the UFC has right now. And his friend and UFC content creator Nina-Marie Danielle knows why.
Nina had joined UFC veterans Daniel Cormier and Chael Sonnen for an episode of the Good Guy/Bad Guy show on ESPN’s YouTube channel, where DC asked her what made Pereira click. Cormier asserted with surprise that no matter what video they made with ‘Poatan’, it went viral!
Nina then explained that Pereira has something that allows people to understand him without the need for him to speak a single word. Citing her time a comedy content creator, she explained that one of the biggest reasons any video became a hit was its ability to get the point across without the need for speaking.
“People are always telling him, ‘Oh, you should learn English, you should learn this’. But there is something about him that transcends across every language… That happens a lot with Alex. So, he’s able to make something funny or whatever the idea is, you get it…. You don’t have to speak the same language to understand what he’s thinking, what he’s feeling, what he is doing.”
Nina believes a lot of people relate to this particular quality Pereira has. It also helps that his story is nothing short of a good redemption arc in real life.
Pereira’s character arc plays well with everyone
Pereira had already been a kickboxing world champion years before he made it to the UFC. But he was down on his luck and admits to having been influenced by alcohol more than anyone would have liked. And then one fine day, an old video of him knocking out the then middleweight champion Israel Adesanya goes viral.
Still the only man to KO Israel Adesanya. Alex Pereira. #UFC248 #MMATwitter #Kickboxing #UFC pic.twitter.com/eURfv62DwI
— Marcellino™ (@marsgotsbars) March 8, 2020
And just like that, everything about him is Googled overnight. People find out that he had already done it twice in kickboxing. The hype builds up but at this point, Pereira is still a relatively unknown entity. And then Izzy goes in and does something petty.
In an interview, he downplays Pereira’s achievements and just calls him a guy who probably brags about beating him once.
“He watches all my fights, and every time I fight, like clockwork, he’d try to put something out like, ‘I beat this guy.’ But I never watch any of his fights, ever. At the end of the day, no one knows who the f*** he is, and he’s going to be that guy when I’m world champion, when I’m a legend, he’s going to be at some pub talking sh** about, ‘I beat that guy one time.”
This triggers Pereira and he decides to get off the proverbial couch and pursue MMA full-time. Soon, he is signed by the UFC and just his fourth match, fights Adesanya for the middleweight title.
He KO’s him out cold and scripts a story that even Hollywood couldn’t have seen coming. He loses the next fight to Adesanya but by this time, it doesn’t really matter. Everything from his story to his face paint to his music has already begun clicking with the audience and he is propelled into stardom.
So Pereira uses it and moves up a weight class to light heavyweight, where he wins the title against Jiri Prochazka with a cold KO at UFC 295. He then goes on to defend the title thrice in a span of three years and twice on short notice to save big PPVs for the UFC, making him a folk hero in the process.
