UFC light-heavyweight champion Alex Pereira recently suggested he wanted to drop back down to middleweight to fight newly crowned champ Dricus du Plessis after watching him beat Israel Adesanya on Saturday night, but Sean Strickland highly doubts that’ll actually happen.
“Alex’s big ass ain’t going back down to 185, dude,” Strickland told ESPN. “As a welterweight that moved up to 185, once you get used to that weight class, the thought of going back down sounds f*cking miserable.
“I think Alex should fight [du Plessis] at 205 [pounds] any day of the week.”
“I remember seeing Alex for his last fight [at 185 pounds] in the back room, and dude, he looked like f*cking death,” Strickland recalled. “Like, when he last [cut to] middleweight, I walked through to say hi to him, and dude, he just looked like f*cking death, like to the point where I’m like, ‘Man, this ain’t good for you, dude. Go up.’
Having been KO’d by Pereira back in 2022, Strickland knows only too well how dangerous the kickboxing ace can be at 185lbs, and so he freely admits that he takes comfort in the fact that a move back down to the division is unlikely for the 205lb kingpin.
“I think at 205 he’d [fight du Plessis] in a heartbeat, but [185] man, I can’t see him doing that. Luckily for us.”
Du Plessis has already suggested that the fight should take place at 205lbs, so that’s definitely a possibility, though it remains to be seen if the UFC would be onboard with the South African getting a chance to become a double-champion this early in his title reign, while Pereira also has to successfully defend his light-heavyweight belt against Khalil Rountree Jr at UFC 307 in October first.
