Regardless of what happens Saturday at UFC 281, Israel Adesanya and Alex Pereira will forever be linked.
Former two-time kickboxing opponents, Adesanya and Pereira are on the verge of a quasi-trilogy bout under a different rule set. Their kickboxing matches, both won by Pereira, seem like they took place during a different lifetime on an alternate planet.
While so much has changed, a lot has remained the same. Adesanya and Pereira still rely heavily on the discipline that got them to the big dance, a UFC middleweight title fight at Madison Square Garden. They’re mixed martial artists now, but still kickboxers.
Adesanya and Pereira have that direct linkage already, but the web extends beyond. Four men shared the ring with both during their kickboxing days. They know what it truly feels like to be kicked, punched and even sometimes knocked out by the fighters on the UFC 281 marquee.
The common links
There’s Yousri Belgaroui, a three-time Glory middleweight title challenger from Amsterdam. He fought Adesanya twice in 2016 and lost both bouts by decision. From 2017-2018, Belgaroui engaged in a gripping trilogy against Pereira, in which he won a decision but was stopped in the following two meetings. The two rivals became allies recently, as Pereira brought Belgaroui to Connecticut to prepare for UFC 281.
Then there’s Simon Marcus, a Canadian kickboxer who captured the Glory middleweight title twice before competing in mixed martial arts for Unified MMA. He beat Israel Adesanya by decision in 2014, then lost two to Pereira in 2017 and 2018.
Currently a power line technician four years removed from combat sports retirement, Robert Thomas has doubt cast when he tells people he fought both UFC 281 headliners, but he did. Thomas lost to both by unanimous decision.
Jason Wilnis has made a name for himself in KSW. In his kickboxing days, however, he was Glory middleweight champion. He defeated Adesanya by decision in 2017 and went 2-1 in a trilogy against Pereira.
What's it like to fight Israel Adesanya?
BELGAROUI: He already had 50 fights in his pocket, mainly in China, I guess. We were fighting for a Chinese organization, WLF. He was fighting with the Chinese flag back then. When I came there, I saw that he was already a star there. He was the golden kid for them. I knew I had to give it a real fight. … He didn’t have an orthodox style. We kind of have a similar style. We knew each other’s tricks. We were really dancing. I think it was fun to be in that fight. That surprised me.
… His movement is amazing. His footwork is amazing. Also, he just understands how to control that octagon. He fights from the outside, feints a lot so people don’t know when he enters. He uses your rhythm, your step to attack when you’re trying to close distance. He moves out very nice. He’s orthodox to unorthodox-southpaw. He does that very well and then uses that. Those are the most important things that I see.
MARCUS: It was a really close fight. He was outboxing me and I was out-kicking him. I went to the extra round and I got the extra round. … He had a lot of energy. He had a lot of cardio. I remember that. I wasn’t in the best condition for our fight, as I didn’t prepare properly. But I remember he had a lot of cardio and as the fight went on he didn’t tire very much as guys usually do.
… He has good composure and good footwork. He’s able to move his feet and stay grounded and balanced quickly. He has really good boxing I.Q. and boxing ability. He’s able to slip punches, find his range, put together combos. He has good skills with his hands. He’s very good with his balance and his footwork.
THOMAS: The guy moves so well. He baited me into some shots hard. He was attacking my body. He was southpaw, then he kept hitting that left kick to my liver all fight. Blasting my liver. Blasting my liver. The first show that knocked me down, he was in orthodox. Then, he shifted back to southpaw. Then, I went to throw the right hand, which sets up nicely against a southpaw. He f*cking baited it so nice. He shifted to southpaw and then he f*cking threw a jump knee right as I threw that cross and just – it hurt to breathe for a while. It hurt to breathe for like a good month. It hurt to take a deep breath, like right in the solar plexus, like he crushed my ribs. At the eight count, it hit eight. I stepped up, took a deep breath and it was like, ‘Crack, crack, crack, crack.’ So yeah, the guy is tricky. He sees stuff. He’s got really good coaches that are picking up on these things as well. He’s just setting up traps and baiting you into stuff. For sure, he’s the most technical chess player of a fighter that I’ve ever fought.
… Izzy is super quick, too, with his direction changes and sh*t. Like I was saying earlier, he kept blasting that liver kick, blasting that liver kick, so then my hand was dropping. Then, he f*cking did that crescent kick and f*cking dropped me in the third round, too. Yeah, again, (he was) just sticking to something, sticking to something so I think he’s going to throw that. Just setting traps and baiting you into stuff. He’s super quick. Like I said, his movement is slick. His footwork is nice, so he’s super hard to hit. I was just chasing him the whole time. … It was f*cking 30-26.
WILNIS: I fought Israel once. … It was a title defense in Los Angeles on Glory. I won that fight on points. I scored a lot with leg kicks, the Dutch style of fighting. Yes, I scored with my opponents. He was moving a lot. His head was difficult to hit. I scored the damage strikes and damage points. Some people thought that he won the fight but I won a unanimous decision. It was a good fight. Israel was also a hard guy to fight. I was kicking him so hard. He was moving like he never felt something.
… His head was difficult to hit. I was kicking him very, very hard man with some leg kicks. He still moved in the fifth round like the first round. His ability to take damage was high and he was still moving. That was crazy about him.
What's it like to fight Alex Pereira?
BELGAROUI: Not just in my kickboxing career, but also in my training career, he hits the hardest. I’ve trained with a lot of heavyweights and a lot of strong guys I’ve never had to fight in the ring. He ranks No. 1 as hardest-hitter. Taking a punch in your guard is not nice with him. Here in sparring, I changed my style up. Closed guard is not impossible. You have to move. You have to pick the shots up a little bit more and move your head and make angles, because his power is not normal.
… It’s not just his power. It’s the way he uses his skills to hit you with the power. He’s very good on timing. You can see this with the drills that we do at the gym. Timing drills. Also, he likes to set up traps. If you look in all his fights, all the knockouts were with traps. It’s not just him throwing bombs and trying to lucky punch someone. That’s it. It’s fight IQ.
MARCUS: The first fight, he had a lot of reach and he was quite accurate and fast in the early rounds. So he knocked me down in the second round. I also hurt my foot in the second round. I wasn’t in my best condition for that first fight. Early on, he did some damage, got the knockdown. But later on in the fight, he faded. I was able to (finish strong). He started every round strong but didn’t finish the round strong. I was able to finish the round stronger than he did. He’s big and hard to push back. From the first fight, I remember him starting strong, getting a little weaker in the fight as a total, as well as each round. Second fight, he was a little bit different. He was bigger the second fight. Bigger, stronger, and I think he just had accumulated more confidence in his punch ability and knockout power. He’d been working on things. He was definitely more skilled, more relaxed, more cardio, bigger, stronger, the second fight than the first.
… He definitely hits harder. He probably hits the hardest. There are different kinds of power. As for that one-punch, heavy-punch power, he definitely probably hits the hardest out of anyone I’ve fought. On the same note, he’s also the biggest fighter out of anyone I’ve fought. He does have natural power. He’s big. He does hit fast, hard from within close and far. He’s also a bigger guy than other guys in our weight class.
THOMAS: We flew to the hotel, dropped our bags off, and went straight to the venue. There was literally no weigh-in or anything when I fought Alex Pereira. When I fought him in a gymnasium in Sao Paulo, everyone was just losing their mind. It was something, man. That was quite the experience. Then, just seeing that he was massive. We didn’t even have weigh-ins. I just showed up and then I just fought. There were a lot of factors in that. Also, the gloves we fought in were the tiniest gloves. They were like six or nine ounces. They were knockout gloves. They were looking for a knockout. The dude looked hard.
… Everything that could’ve gone wrong probably went wrong, like getting there two days late for the fights, not weighing in, having to go straight to the venue. Even like the last minute and the last second, I was getting pumped up. ‘0 to 100’ was the big song at the time. It was going to be my walkout. I was waiting. They called my name. I’m ready to go. Then ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’ comes on as my walkout song instead. Everything that could’ve gone wrong went wrong.
I went out there and he dropped me right in the first round, too. … He was the first guy to ever put me down. I had like 100 amateur fights. At that point, I think I was 6-1 professional when I fought him. Yeah, he was the first guy to ever drop me. That was something. He dropped me in the first round. He hit me. He threw a spinning kick and didn’t really connect. So then I f*cking threw a stupid spinning kick, too, and I was off balance and he just rocked me with a right hand. I got up, but I couldn’t see. It was right at the end of the first round he dropped me. Then, the whole second round was just f*cking stars. It was static. … Pereira is a big, scary-looking guy. He was like the terminator, no emotion.
WILNIS: Fight 1 – In Brazil was the first meeting where we faced each other. … At that time he was new on the “It’s Showtime” card. That time, I won and then he started to participate (more) also in the events. … It was a cool experience making a trip like that to Brazil and his hometown. It was a nice trip, going as the underdog in his home country. It was a nice experience.
Fight 2 – He was a little bit better I think but also the same. I won that fight on points. It was a good fight, also. In Dubai, I did the rematch for him. He was hungry to win but I won that second fight also.
Fight 3 – He rocked me with a head kick and from that moment I was gone. In that third fight, he was a lot more experienced. He did his preparations very good. It was a big difference in that third fight.
… Not in the beginning but in the later years, he was a lot more experienced. He came in much harder, more for the knockout. He had some hard strikes in the last years. You can see his knockouts, also. He was improved a lot. … He was very big, man. His punches were very big and very hard. He’s very big and very fast. He was very hard, man.
Predictions
BELGAROUI: Pereira
“To be really honest, I think Alex can win this fight. Alex will win this fight. That is not like big (odds) or whatever. I think he can catch him. I think he’s going to catch him. They have a 25-minute world title fight. Adesanya is very, very good on the outside in trying to out-strike and outpoint people. But Alex’s pressure, I think is going to be too much for 25 minutes. Also, he’s not going to take low kicks like all of the other opponents do. He’s not going to take the leg kicks. … I think he will catch him with one of those shots from controlling the center of the cage.”
MARCUS: Pereira
“This is just what I think. I think it’s difficult to judge who’s going to win because the last time they fought Adesanya was beating Pereira the entire fight and then Pereira knocked him out with one or two punches. It showed that Adesanya was the better striker at that time and the more skilled and higher level guy whereas we’ve always known Pereira has that one-punch knockout power. But since then until now, we’ve seen Adesanya make the jump to the UFC where he’s looked impeccable. But at the same time, the level of striking in the UFC is not what it was when he was fighting in Glory. It’s really hard to judge to see whether he’s really gotten that much better as a striker or whether he just looks that much better due to his competition. Whereas Pereira on the other hand has definitely improved. His striking is definitely top class in the world now. He’s proved he has that one-punch knockout power. He’s also gotten bigger since the first time they fought. So what I think is for Adesanya to win, he’s got to be a little more technical and land something sharp and clean that will hurt Pereira to gain his respect or keep him back, whereas Pereira is hungry. He’s the bigger, stronger, harder-hitting fighter.
“I think it’s going to be difficult to keep Pereira off Adesanya for five rounds without him turning it into a fight at some point, just keeping it technical. When it turns into a fight, I see Pereira having the advantage with the reach, size, and power advantage. In terms of probability, I probably think it’s going to turn into a fight at some point and get scrappy. Adesanya’s game plan, which would be best for him to get technical, using kicks, boxing and footwork to kind of negate Pereira’s power and forward movement. I think it’s going to be a little difficult to do for five entire rounds. I’m kind of leaning more toward Pereira with his advantages, but at the same time Adesanya has prove to have a special ability as a fighter to rise to the occasion. It’s kind of up in the air. I can’t pick someone for sure, but I am swaying a little bit more on the Pereira side.”
THOMAS: Adesanya
“I’ve got to lean toward Izzy for sure. He’s the champ and also he has something to prove. Even when you watch both those fights, he was picking him apart the entire fights, right? Now we have five-minute rounds. I feel like he has something to prove. Obviously, there’s the factor Alex can knock you out at any moment. I don’t see Izzy slipping with everything that’s on the line there. Also, there are longer rounds, longer fight, and Alex hasn’t been in there that long. I can see Izzy picking him apart, dancing around for a lot of the time and just making Alex miss. Maybe like a Yoel Romero-type fight, but I can see him really putting it on him in the later rounds possibly – and possibly even finishing him. But who knows?”
WILNIS: Toss-up
“Experience is with Adesanya. I think he’s the smarter one to win the fight, but Pereira is the harder one I think. A good thing about this fight is they both have the same reach. Pereira has a better chance to hit him and hurt him. If Adesanya is fighting smart, it’s going to be difficult for Pereira. I don’t know who is going to take the win on this one, but it’s going to be in spectacular because I think there’s also a little fire involved. There’s a little bit of bad blood. I don’t know who’s going to take the win.”
For more on the card, visit MMA Junkie’s event hub for UFC 281.
