UFC 307 Mailbag: Was Alex Pereira the UFC’s best investment since Conor McGregor?

Wednesday, October 9, 2024 - 22:00

Pereira v Rountree Jr.
Alex Pereira | Photo by Jeff Bottari/Zuffa LLC

UFC 307 took place this past Saturday and the promotion has one new champion, plus one emerging all-time great. In the co-main event, Julianna Peña won a contentious decision over Raquel Pennington to reclaim the bantamweight title, while in the main event Alex Pereira added another successful light heavyweight title defense to his résumé with a surprisingly fun fight against Khalil Rountree Jr.

All that plus plenty more went down this past weekend so let’s dive in and answer your biggest questions.

UFC 307, broadly

“Was this the worst Pay-Per-View of the year?”

No, I don’t think so.

We did a big review of UFC 307 already so you can go and read that to get not just my thought but the rest of the team’s as well, but my feelings are basically this: UFC 307 wasn’t the best card and it was definitely a little weird, but it was perfectly adequate.

Everyone wants different things from their MMA fandom and for me, what I’m most interested in are fun fights with meaningful stakes. Well, UFC 307 was a little light on the former, but nearly every bout on the card was significant in one way or another. Two title fights, one of the six greatest fighters of all time competing, a probable future champion in a tough scrap, a new welterweight contender emerging, and the final fight of a two-time champion’s career? Important things happened in Salt Lake City on Saturday, and even though it wasn’t the most exciting at points, we did at least get to end with a bang.

UFC 307 won’t go down as one of the best events of the year, but it was definitely better than UFC 297 or UFC 301, and probably on par with UFC 298 as well.

Alex Pereira

“Can you outline the alternate universe of the last couple of years is ‘Poatan’ didn’t sign with the UFC? Who saves three PPVs this year?

The key takeaway from UFC 307, as it has been so many times this year, is that the UFC got a friggin’ steal when they signed Alex Pereira in 2021.

In just three years in the company, Pereira has fought 10 times, is a two-division champion, has three successful title defenses at light heavyweight, has won six bonuses, and just this year alone jumped in to save three separate PPVs. It’s an unprecedented level of activity and accomplishment that the UFC has needed. Don’t get me wrong, the UFC is bigger than any one fighter and will always be OK, but the promotion currently has a dearth of stars and Pereira has come along to fill the role that normally multiple fighters serve. He’s been a godsend to the UFC.

But what if they had not signed him? I love hypotheticals, so let’s play this out. If Pereira isn’t there to challenge Israel Adesanya, either Robert Whittaker gets a third crack at him or Sean Strickland gets the call, because he was never obliterated by Pereira. Does Strickland beat Izzy if that fight happens a year earlier? Who knows. Entirely possible, which then leads to a rematch and Whittaker is also in the mix. Ultimately, when it all plays out we probably still end up with Dricus du Plessis as champ, so middleweight is similar, even if the road to get there is very different.

Light heavyweight is a different story entirely. Jiri Prochazka returns and probably fights Jan Blachowicz or Magomed Ankalaev for the title, since Jamahal Hill is injured, but it’s impossible to know. 205 has been such a cluster the past few years and it’s Pereira who brought stability to the division. Without him, maybe we’re still living in anarchy, and the tentpole events of the UFC calendar — UFC 300 and UFC 303 — are substantially less exciting than we ended up getting.

Given how important Pereira has been to the UFC over the past few years, there’s a real argument to be made that he’s the best signing the promotion has made since Conor McGregor.

Next

“Who should Pereira fight next, legacy wise?”

Pereira appears set to take a little break for the time being and good. No one deserves it more. So given that, there are really only two options for Poatan when he comes back: heavyweight or Magomed Ankalaev.

The heavyweight option is the one I think most fans want. We’ve never had a three-division champion in the UFC and so the appeal of that is obvious: make history, stake your claim as the greatest to ever do it. And given what Pereira has done for the company, it’s very possible he gets that chance. Jon Jones faces Stipe Miocic at UFC 309 and all signs point to that being the final fight of both men’s careers. Should that come to pass, Tom Aspinall will be promoted to undisputed heavyweight champion and one of the bigger fights the UFC could put together is Aspinall vs. Pereira. This is extremely possible and if Pereira wins, it’s obviously the best for his legacy.

The other option is Ankalaev. If Ankalaev gets past Aleksandar Rakic at UFC 308, that’s the fight that light heavyweight demands. A champion has responsibilities and personally, that is a fight I desperately want to see. The big knock you can make about Pereira’s UFC run is that it’s been pretty cultivated to avoid bad style matchups. Well, Ankalaev is one of those so if Pereira can beat him — which he absolutely can — that’s a big feather in Poatan’s cap as he tries to climb the all-time great rankings.

Of course, the best option, if he can somehow pull it off, is Jon Jones. It’s hard to imagine a world where Jones beats Miocic and then somehow avoids fighting Aspinall for the heavyweight title... until you remember that this is a business and Jones vs. Pereira is the biggest fight the UFC can put together right now that doesn’t involve Conor McGregor. There’s a non-zero chance Pereira may fight Jones in 2025 and if he can swing that, that’s the only logical answer.

Khalil Rountree Jr.

“Khalil’s stock just went up, right? What’s a fight that makes sense for him?”

100 percent!

Everyone knew the score coming into UFC 307: Rountree probably didn’t “deserve” this title shot but it’s a fun stylistic matchup and Pereira should deliver a great finish. Well, in the sobering light of Monday morning, all of that is true, but also, Rountree was far more competitive than most thought he would be!

Rountree had the opportunity of a lifetime on Saturday and while he failed to come away with the belt, he delivered the best of himself in his biggest moment. That’s how you make fans and become a star. From this point forward, Rountree won’t be fighting Contender Series signees in the APEX. He’s in main events or on PPV main cards. Nobody likes a moral victory, but this was a pretty darn good one.

As for who is next, Jamahal Hill seems appropriate. Aside from being completely asinine and unaware, Hill’s nonsense after UFC 307 was basically an indirect shot at Rountree. So it’s time to knuckle up.

Rountree vs. Hill

“Would this version of Rountree have beaten Hill?

It’s hard to say. The thing about Hill, other than him being exceedingly bad at playing the dozens, is that it’s hard to know how good he is. Prior to his own completely undeserving title shot (honestly, Hill deserved his less than Rountree did) Hill’s UFC career was knocking out people who aren’t exactly world beaters. Then he put on a sensational performance against Glover Teixeira that basically looked nothing like his previous fights, before immediately looking atrocious and getting obliterated by Pereira in his next bout.

Is Hill the guy who dummied Glover or was that his “Cody Garbrandt vs. Dominick Cruz” performance, having a perfect night one time in the biggest spot? Only time will tell, and while if I was guessing I’d pick Rountree to win, mostly I just want to see the actual answer for ourselves.

Julianna Peña and Raquel Pennington

“Is Julianna Peña getting into the UFC Hall of Fame?”

Yeesh. I guess so?

On Saturday Peña became the second woman to win bantamweight gold twice as she reclaimed the title in an extremely controversial split decision win over Raquel Pennington. How controversial you ask? Only one MMA media member didn’t give Pennington the fight; it was me, and I scored the bout a draw.

But controversy or not, Peña is now a two-time champion and that’s pretty rarified company. In UFC history, only 18 fighters have won titles multiple times in the same weight class. Four of those fighters are currently enshrined in the Hall and six more are unquestioned locks to join them. Of the remaining eight of that list, almost all of them are current fighters, and very likely to end up there as well. Basically, if you win a belt twice, you’re in the Hall. Add in that Peña is also responsible for one of the biggest upsets in UFC history and I think that alone is enough to get her there one day.

It’s a heck of an accomplishment. Now if she could only work on her promotional abilities.

Kayla Harrison

“Is the only thing that can stop Kayla the scale?”

Really? After that performance?

In the main card opener, Kayla Harrison made her sophomore outing in the UFC, winning a hard-fought decision over Ketlen Vieira. To be frank, it was probably the worst fight of Harrison’s recent career. And that’s not because of Harrison, it’s because of Vieira.

Harrison is a force of nature but the reality is she’s still very, very green. The two-time Olympic gold medalist has only been competing in MMA for six years and on Saturday we got to see just how limited she still is. Harrison’s striking is barely above functional at this point so if she cannot score takedowns, the fight is very, very hard for her. It’s not hard to see how Harrison loses in the UFC right now: someone does what Vieira did, but better.

That being said, there were plenty of positives for Harrison on Saturday. Vieira is one of the worst possible matchups for her in terms of skills and physicality, so she was always going to have a hard time in there. And when she did, Harrison persevered. Despite an enormous weight cut and competing at altitude, Harrison found a way to make things happen in the final round, and she showed solid fight IQ to make sure she walked out of there with the win. That’s all very, very good.

Add on that Harrison is an almost cartoonishly bad matchup for Peña and it’s extremely likely that Harrison adds UFC gold to her trophy collection soon.

Carla Esparza

“What will you remember about Carla Esparza’s career? First UFC strawweight champ, four UFC title fights, sixteen UFC appearances in almost ten years (TUF 20 Finale was December 2014)...”

Esparza retired on Saturday after a contentious split decision loss, ending a 27-fight, 14-year MMA career. The UFC even gave her a nice little send off video package. It was less than Esparza deserved but seeing how she is, like Peña, a two-time champion, I suspect she’ll ultimately get more flowers when she’s inducted into the Hall of Fame both for her title wins and for her role in pioneering the women’s weight classes in the UFC.

As for what I’ll remember about Carla’s career, the answer is easy: it’s her second title win, defeating Rose Namajunas at UFC 274 to reclaim the strawweight title 2611 days after she lost it.

Of the 18 fighters to reclaim belts, almost all of them did it a year or two after losing the title. Really, only Carla and Randy Couture had big periods of time between title reigns, and Carla’s was nearly two years more than Randy’s (his second and third heavyweight title runs). It’s an incredible accomplishment that basically no one remembers or talks about because it happened in literally the worst fight in modern UFC history.

But there’s another reason it sticks out to me: despite how bad the fight was, Esparza’s second title win was the real deal.

Esparza won the inaugural strawweight belt by virtue of winning The Ultimate Fighter, but the truth is that most people in the know at the time didn’t really put much stock in that. Yes, Esparza was the Invicta champ before TUF, but the belief was that the winner of Joanna Jedrzejczyk and Claudia Gadelha was the champion in waiting, a belief which was proven true. So though Esparza was the inaugural champ in name, there was a bit of a Nicco Montano “were you really the champ?” to it all. But once she won the belt a second time, all that is over. It’s like when Cormier won the heavyweight belt by knocking out Stipe: there were no asterisks to that title. Same for Esparza, and that’s why it will always stick out to me.

Thanks for reading, and thank you for everyone who sent in tweets (Xs?)! Do you have any burning questions about things at least somewhat related to combat sports? Then you’re in luck, because you can send your tweets to me, @JedKMeshew, and I will answer my favorite ones! Doesn’t matter if they’re topical or insane, just so long as they are good. Thanks again, and see y’all next week.

Source: 
https://www.mmafighting.com/2024/10/9/24264426/ufc-307-mailbag-was-alex-pereira-the-ufcs-best-investment-since-conor-mcgregor