WATCH PEREIRA

“He is speed running a Hall of Fame career. Like he is doing things that normally take fighters years on years on years to get there to be a double champion, to, you know, move up the ranks of the all time great light heavyweight champions as quickly as he is doing it, to in the last like year and a month or whatever, like he has headlined MSG, he headlined UFC 300, he headlined International Fight Week.”

“When Alex Pereira aligned himself with Glover Tashira, he took on all the education of that entire lineage from Jon Hackleman to Chuck Liddell to Glover Tashira and all of that stuff. And in the process, Alex Pereira has built himself into something that we've never seen before. Like Jed said, this is uncharted territory. We've never seen anything like this.”

“He's knocking guys out. He's stepping up. He's not playing this game of negotiating with the organization. He's stepping up when he needs to. He's doing this on injuries. He's fighting the next best guy. He's taking chances of fighting the number eight guy on, you know, under these conditions. And he's knocking them out.”

“If Jon Jones goes out there and beats Stipe at a Madison Square Garden, I think most people expect him to. And he decides to stick around for another. As much as we want to see Tom Aspinall get his day, I don't think Jon's going to call for that fight. I think he's going to call for Pereira. And Jones versus Pereira would be absolutely gigantic, no matter how you feel about it.”

“And then the fact that you got a guy who's incredibly disciplined, who has the history that he has in glory kickboxing. So he has the combat sports acumen, but he's got the discipline and now the education and that lineage that dates all the way back to Chuck Liddell.”