Pereira on UFC 313 travel criticism: ‘I’ve done this a million times’

Alex Pereira is shrugging off criticism surrounding his nomadic training schedule coming into UFC 313.

Pereira is set to defend his light heavyweight title against Magomed Ankalaev on March 8th in what many believe could be his toughest test to date. That’s because Ankalaev isn’t just a powerful striker — he’s also from Dagestan and has some serious wrestling skills.

But if “Poatan” is worried about being held down for 25 minutes, he’s not changing his travel plans over it. As usual, the two division champ’s social media accounts are full of Pereira goofing around in Australia and Korea. Some of that is old footage, but the Brazilian was front and center at UFC 312 in Sydney to corner Sean Strickland — which led to Daniel Cormier questioning the quality of training he’s getting on the road.

interview with Bloody Elbow. “But I had these prior commitments in Australia and it just ended up that it worked out for me to be over there.”

“I heard people saying, ‘Oh he doesn’t even speak English, what difference does it make him being there?’ But we have the same kind of energy, we’re on the same vibe, both fighting in the same company, so there’s a lot of good rapport between us.”

“I can say to Daniel Cormier and a bunch of the other specialists saying that I shouldn’t have gone out there that I’ve been in this situation before,” Pereira continued. “It’s actually been worse before when I was in Australia and had signed up to fight but didn’t even know I was going to do that. This time it was all very planned out, I knew what I was going to do.”

“I took basically my whole team down there, I had eight people in Australia with me and we knew exactly what to do so we had it all very well planned out.”

In the end, Pereira claimed he’s used to training on the road, and it certainly seems like he lives and breathes martial arts as opposed to some who just show up for their two- or three-a-days during camp time.

“A lot of people are talking about the traveling and all of the trips,” Pereira concluded. “Maybe it’s not the ideal situation. But I feel like I’m very experienced with that, and I’ve done this a million times to be honest.”