Pereira’s attempt at a third divisional title never really got rolling. Gane was quicker to find his range off the bat, landing a steady stream of jabs and low kicks, as well as starting to line up his shifting counters. Pereira found a few kicks of his own, but he was definitely a step behind the natural Heavyweight after five minutes. In round two, “Poatan” was stunned and dropped by a jab, then all hell broke loose.
Either way, Pereira wound up bloodied and stopped midway through the second. Per “Poatan,” the illegal blows allowed Gane to force the finish and save himself from a comeback, because the French athlete was already tired and wouldn’t have the heart to keep fighting as the fight dragged on.
“People say that I got tired. No, I did not,” Pereira told Ariel Helwani through a translator (via Yahoo Sports). “I opened my mouth in the corner to do my own breathing exercise to recover [after Round 1]. Everything was fine, and Ciryl, the way that he was gassing after the fight was over, if I had the chance to survive … the end of the second round, Ciryl does not survive the fight because he does not have heart. You could see in his eyes. I got robbed in that moment.
“Ciryl was lying down [after the fight] because he was dead tired. That’s why he really had to hit me with those [potentially illegal] shots so he could handle that.”
While Gane definitely expended a lot of energy in that second round flurry to force the finish, it’s a little presumptuous to think he couldn’t have recovered if indeed “Poatan” did survive. We have seen Gane fight five rounds multiple times, after all, and his gas tank held up well in his bloody war with Tai Tuivasa, which saw Gane dropped early in the fight.
Regardless, Pereira has been unusually vocal in the aftermath of this loss. The Brazilian is well-known for his stoic nature, but that reputation may change after his laundry list of complaints. Though Pereira is angling for a rematch, there’s also an obvious alternative looking him in the face in fellow UFC White House combatant Josh Hokit, the surging Heavyweight who’s been angling for a “Chama” showdown for the last month.
