Pereira: Hill Not A Top 3 Light Heavyweight

Alex Pereira likes his chances against his upcoming title challenger.

UFC 300’s big highly anticipated main event bout was revealed after UFC 298 this past weekend (Feb. 17, 2024). The Light Heavyweight title will be on the line when the champion, Pereira, looks to fend off the returning former titleholder, Jamahal Hill, in Las Vegas on April 13, 2024.

The 205-pound division has been cursed to an extent since its all-time great, Jon Jones, vacated the strap in February 2020. It’s been a revolving door of champions with only one successful defense between five different titlists, two of which fell from injuries. The most recent of those two was Hill, and because of that, he’s been critiqued and questioned when it comes to where he ranks amongst the top Light Heavyweights in UFC (currently No. 1 officially).

“He’s not in second,” Pereira said on The MMA Hour. “I don’t know which position I’d put him, but at least fourth. … If I were to move up to Light Heavyweight today and had to make my debut and there’s Jamahal Hill, Jan Blachowicz, and Jiri Prochazka, and I had to choose the best fight for me out of those three, I’d choose Jamahal.”

Coincidentally, Pereira has defeated both Blachowicz and Prochazka thus far in his two-fight UFC Light Heavyweight run. Between Pereira and Hill, they have a tie to Hill’s crowning moment, his last fight, when he defeated Pereira’s coach and the former champion, Glover Teixeira, via a unanimous decision at UFC 283 in January 2023.

Throughout this whole saga, the current No. 3-ranked contender in the official UFC rankings, Magomed Ankalaev, has made his case for a title shot. Pereira hopes he can silence doubters with a future win over the Russian next.

“[Fighting] Ankalaev would be good because many people talk,” Pereira said. “Sometimes we want to prove a little bit, not to the fans, but to specialists that say this is a [tough] fight and whatnot. People don’t know the way I train. We know that a fight is a fight, but it would be nice to be able to prove to these people that I’m good on the ground as well.”