Strickland Vs. Pereira Being Finalized For UFC 277

Former two division kickboxing champion Alex Pereira is making a big jump up the rankings to take on #4 ranked Sean Strickland on July 30th.

Alex Pereira has only been with the UFC for two fights, but the kickboxing champion is now getting a chance to jump to the top of the middleweight rankings. All he has to do to punch that ticket is beat #4 ranked Sean Strickland in a fight the UFC is targeting for UFC 277 on July 30th.

That news comes via ESPN’s Brett Okamoto, who reports multiple sources confirmed the UFC was in the process of ‘finalizing’ a bout between the two strikers.

Sean Strickland is on a six fight win streak and was in the running for a middleweight title shot before a tentative decision win over Jack Hermansson in his first main event led to Jared Cannonier getting the nod instead. Now he’ll have to fight the unranked Pereira, whose 2-0 UFC / 5-1 MMA resume may seem short … until you take into account his 33-7 kickboxing record and status as a former GLORY middleweight and light heavyweight champion.

Even more interestingly , Pereira holds two kickboxing wins over current middleweight champion Israel Adesanya — a decision win from 2016 and a knockout win from 2017. That’s the only KO Adesanya ever suffered and marked his final kickboxing fight before moving full time into MMA competition.

This is the first bout announced for UFC 277 and it’s quite the banger. But not everyone is excited about the match-up. Former middleweight contender turned unwilling light heavyweight Paulo Costa had been calling for a fight with Sean Strickland, and he responded to the announcement by calling Sean a ‘rat.’

It’s still unclear as to whether the UFC will even allow Costa to compete at middleweight for his next fight, given that “Borrachinha” turned up grossly overweight to his bout against Marvin Vettori in October of 2021.