While Pereira absolutely needed a finish in order to secure a victory and claim the title, the newly minted champion is keen to point out that his most recent run-in with Adesanya wasn’t some kind of mythical come-from-behind performance after getting dominated for the better part of 20 minutes.
“Let’s be honest here: the last fight was hard, and every fight is hard,” Pereira said, reflecting on the November engagement at New York’s Madison Square Garden. “Just to be inside the cage is hard. The way that people put on is like I was dominated, which did not happen.
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“If you look at the first round, I was winning the whole round until I got clipped in the last two seconds. Round 2, I won that round; I even took him down. Round 3, I was winning that round until we scrambled and I fell on bottom, so the details gave Israel Adesanya the rounds, not dominance.”
Given Adesanya’s lengthy reign atop the division and overall success in the 185-pound ranks in the UFC, an immediate rematch between the two was automatic, but also creates a series of interesting questions heading into this weekend’s UFC 287 main event in Miami.
Former two-division world champion Daniel Cormier famously said, “I guess if he wins both fights there is no rivalry” following his second defeat to Jon Jones.
