UFC light-heavyweight champion Alex Pereira is wasting no time getting back into the Octagon as he’ll now defend his title against Khalil Rountree Jr. in the main event of UFC 307 in Salt Lake City, Utah on October 5th.
For those keeping score this will be Pereira’s 4th title fight in the space of 11 months as he looks to continue his devastating run through the 205lb division’s leading contenders.
It’s a run that started in November last year when he fought Jiri Prochazka for the vacant light-heavyweight title and TKO’d him with an elbow in the 2nd round to win the belt.
Pereira was then chosen to headline UFC 300 in April opposite former champ Jamahal Hill and KO’d him in less than a round.
Just over two months later Pereira was back at it again, this time TKO’ing Prochazka for a 2nd time early in the 2nd round of their rematch.
There has since been talk that the former middleweight champion is now interested in a move up to heavyweight in a bid to become a champion in three divisions, but for his next fight at least he’s sticking to 205lbs.
This time he’ll be going up against Khalil Rountree Jr, who isn’t the most obvious choice given that he’s currently only ranked No.8 in the division.
That being said, the 34-year-old Rountree is on a five-fight winning streak that’s included four wins via strikes, including his latest TKO victories over Chris Daukaus and Anthony Smith.
Nevertheless, there is a strong argument to be made that Pereira should be fighting the No.2 ranked Magomedov Ankalaev instead, even though that’d mean pulling him from his currently booked fight with the No.5 ranked Aleksander Rakic at UFC 308.
After all, Ankalaev is currently on a 12-fight unbeaten run, and it would be easy to just swap Rountree Jr into his place opposite Rakic, setting up the winner of that as a more logical next step for the winner at UFC 307.
The UFC clearly sees things differently though and so Pereira vs. Rountree Jr. fronts a UFC 307 card that will also feature a women’s bantamweight title fight between current champion Raquel Pennington and Julianna Pena, as well as Movsar Evloev vs. Aljamain Sterling and Kayla Harrison vs. Ketlen Vieira.
