It's nice sometimes to see this sort of sentiment in the sport since so much of the game seems to center around people constantly picking holes in other competitors and in my mind, a lot of the time it is exclusively for marketing purposes. I say this with relative confidence because most of the time even the most heated supposed rivalries end with most of the guys and girls showing mad respect for one another and doing a bunch of hugging after the feud gets settled in the octagon.
One of the weirdest rivalries in my lifetime was the one between Israel Adesanya and Alex Pereira because the latter wasn't even in UFC when somehow UFC got a hold of information from Alex being the "only person on the planet to ever defeat Israel" even though these defeats (2-0 to Pereira) happened a LONG time ago and in a completely different sport of kickboxing.
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I suppose Pereira has a lot to be thankful for because if it hadn't been for the very distant fact that he emerged victorious over Adesanya so many years ago in events that almost nobody watched - AND - the fact that one of the people he defeated just happened to rise to the top of the ranks in UFC, most of the world probably wouldn't even know his name. When UFC got in touch with him to perhaps move up to UFC to face his old foe, he was nearly broke, living a tough life, and didn't have much of a future ahead of him. After just a few fights in UFC it was clear that they had a big star on their hands and when he dethroned Israel, the world was shocked. Here we are a few years later and Pereira has become one of only a handful of fighters to ever hold championships in two different weight classes and now he has his eyes on becoming the first person to ever hold gold in 3 of them.
Recently, there has been some badmouthing, or perhaps just opinions that the UFC blows up for marketing, where Israel Adesanya consistently bets against Pereira in the bouts that he has been in after facing Israel himself. Now these bets are likely just talking and not actual bets with bookies, because that is almost certainly illegal for fighters to bet on the sport that they are currently involved in. We all remember Pete Rose, right?
I don't know if UFC was hoping that Pereira would "take the bait" and say nasty things about Adesanya in return, but if that was their wish, they didn't get it. Recently Pereira was asked about the upcoming title fight between Israel Adesanya and Dricus Du Plessis that will take place in Australia. I don't know if UFC was expecting or hoping for Alex to say a bunch of nasty things about his former opponent, but he did quite the opposite, much to many people's surprise.
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Unless you speak Portuguese, there is a really good chance that you don't really know much about Alex's persona. To me, he is just a man of few words and simply looks and moves in one of the most intimidating fashions that I have ever seen in the sport. Despite making weight in all of his fights, he always looks significantly more physically intimidating than whoever he is up against. Looks can be deceiving though, and when he was on a podcast recently and was asked about his old rival, he had nothing but great things to say about "the Last Stylebender."
“Just because he said that about me (saying hoping he loses,) doesn’t mean I’ll say it back. It’s what I think. I don’t think he loses this fight. I hope he wins because he has a beautiful story. I think he has to continue his story. He isn’t a young guy.”
He went on to say that there is no bad blood on his part towards the man and that he hopes that one day in the future that the two of them can train together and share knowledge of their experience in combat sports. The MMA world was quite shocked at his response and I think we are conditioned to think that he would respond negatively just because that is what is so often the case and yes, I think most of it is for marketing purposes and is encouraged by the management at UFC to sell more pay-per-view buys.
I’m here, cheering for him. If he doesn’t cheer for me, that’s not my problem. But I’m here, cheering for him.”
Maybe it is just me, but I would like to see more of this in the sport. The fake grudges have been happening for so long only to have the end result be two battered men embracing one another at the end of the fight, that I have a really hard time believing that any of it is real. It's nice to me to see one of the most scary fighters this sport has ever known show a softer side and I applaud Alex Pereira for keeping it real. Maybe he is just a different kind of fighter that lets his performance in the octagon do all the talking for him and doesn't need any publicity. Since so much of this sport and other combat sports has devolved into a social media frenzy rather than leaving everything in the ring, this is a very welcome change to me.
I think that perhaps UFC was attempting to force this feud so that if things go south for both of them in their upcoming fights that they could pit them against one another again. It does seem like something that UFC would do