Saturday night's UFC 281 middleweight championship fight against Israel Adesanya at Madison Square Garden was Alex Pereira's fifth martial arts fight.
In fact, he signed with the UFC last year to train in kickboxing. Fellow Brazilian Glover Teixeira wanted someone to train him for an upcoming fight in 2020, and Pereira answered the call, still in his MMA training.
The 35-year-old Pereira is still able to calm down the fight, so his lack of long-term experience doesn't matter. And this game's slow start didn't matter either.
Pereira connected with Adesanya's pinned punch in the fifth round, pushing Pereira to a TKO victory to become the new UFC middleweight champion.
"For everyone who says I can't go five rounds, look what I did," Pereira, now 4-1, said through an interpreter.
Teixeira, a fighter he trained in Pereira's corner for the past two years, entered the ring after the win to celebrate winning the 185-pound championship in the main event that Pereira hosted.
This is Perera's third win over Adesanya, the first two coming via kickboxing. However, this war was not predictable. Pereira doesn't bring a lot of MMA experience to the fight as Adesanya has been the champion since 2019 and had a 12-fight winning streak before the fight.
Adesanya had the upper hand early in the fight, but he caught his opponent in the fifth and Adesanya caught him with a right hand and then a left hook. After a few punches, the fight stopped.
It was Pereira's left hand that earned him the nickname Poatan or "Stone Hand" as he worked mostly with his left hand. This fist is covered with a stone tattoo.
Pereira knew he had to find that power in the fifth inning. All three judges put Adesanya first before the round.
"Get him out?'' Pereira said through an interpreter, according to ESPN. "Glover said, 'You've got to get out.'
For Pereira, this marks the end of a long and winding road to success. At the age of 21, after working all his life in a tire store in Sao Paulo, Brazil, he joined a kickboxing studio. He was not much of a football player so he needed an outlet and something to get him out of his drinking habit.
He had a successful career in kickboxing. And then, in 2020, in the midst of a resurgence in his MMA career, Teixeira recruited Pereira to his gym in Bethel. The two have been training together ever since, and both live in Danbury.
"I never believed I would be a champion," he recently told Hearst Connecticut. "I thought it was something to do, something to do."
The UFC has a strong presence in Portugal and is a successful tournament for the western Connecticut community with a total population of over 85,000. Teixeira won the UFC Lightweight Championship by submission at UFC 267 in September 2021, making him the first oldest champion in UFC history at age 42. Teixeira lost the belt in June, but a rematch is expected next month.
Dominic Reyes and Wellington Thurman, trained by Teixeira's gym, appeared on the UFC card at Madison Square Garden, but were later defeated.
An Associated Press report was used in this story.
