Alex Pereira I got a little extra for saving the day in UFC 303.
This is what Pereira’s coach has been saying for a long time. Pliny Crosswho revealed on Monday The time of MMA That UFC CEO Dana Blanca gave Pereira a $303,000 post-fight bonus following his successful light heavyweight title defense at UFC 303. Pereira knocked out Use Prochazka with a brutal kick to the head in the second round after accepting the fight on just two weeks notice following the withdrawal of the original headliner Conor McGregor due to an injury.
“I was talking to Dana in the back, and they were talking about a bunch of stuff, and Dana said, ‘You actually won Performance of the Night. ’ And he said, ‘$303,000? ’ He said, ‘No, no, no, $50,000,’” Cruz explained Monday on The time of MMA.
“But the reality of the fact is he didn’t. He got $300,000 bonuses for (UFC) 300 and (Pereira) didn’t get the Performance of the Night award. They gave two to Max (Holloway), so he was a little upset about that. And I think because of his whole history and then taking the fight on two weeks notice, Dana looked at him and said, ‘You know what, man? I’m going to take care of you. You’ve got the $303,000.’ He even joked, told him to buy a supercar with that money. (Pereira) says, ‘I’ve got enough supercars.’ He wants a Cybertruck.”
Pereira, 36, has saved the day for the UFC twice in a three-month span, having also defeated jamahal hill in the last-minute main event of UFC 300 on April 13 to rescue the promotion’s well-documented efforts to find a suitable headliner for the tricentennial card.
But if the UFC 300 saga was already a roller coaster, UFC 303 could well have been Formula Rossa.
Cruz said Pereira was still in the negotiation stage for a rematch against Prochazka on August 17 in UFC 305 When promotion officials first spoke to the team about the possibility of replacing McGregor, Cruz admitted that he was initially against the idea and told Pereira as much, however, “Poatan” was ready to accept immediately. By the next morning, all the details had been worked out and the impromptu title rematch had been made official.
Pereira previously defeated Prochazka by second-round TKO in November 2023 to capture the vacant light heavyweight title, and Cruz said he expected a longer fight the second time around. That might have happened, too, if not for a last-minute video study.
“Alex is a much better stand-up fighter than Prochazka, so we wanted to be patient,” Cruz said. “I told him, ‘Bro, let’s take the first two rounds easy, let’s control our pace. ’ Because Jiri, the longer the fight goes on, he tends to lower his discipline level a little bit and starts throwing things, starts being a little bit more risky, taking risks.
“And our game plan going into fight night was to basically go in there, feel out the first two rounds and pick up the pace as the fight went on, especially if Prochazka was going to try to do a grappling fight. We knew that neither of them could last five rounds, because it was the second week of camp, so the longer the fight goes, that’s going to benefit Alex. And then it happened, what happened in the locker room.”
What happened in the locker room, as Cruz described it, has already become part of Pereira’s history.
Both Pereira and Cruz revealed after the fight that… I noticed the timing of the head kick that ended the fight while scrolling through Instagram in the locker room. Prior to the fight, the UFC’s social media team posted clips of both fighters warming up and Pereira’s team immediately spotted the hole in Prochazka’s game plan. Cruz said the adjustment was made less than 20 minutes before Pereira exited the fight. In the end, the champion’s pre-fight audible worked perfectly.
The footage from Prochazka’s locker room also stood in stark contrast to the mood presented by Pereira’s team in their clip, which showed Pereira and his team casually line dancing.
Cruz suspects that Pereira’s nonchalant but remarkably focused demeanor during fight week may have played a trick on Prochazka, especially after Prochazka accused Pereira of practicing “black magic” before their first fight in UFC 295.
“The dance was a magic ritual. That was doing witchcraft right before the fight,” Cruz said, laughing. “Man, I think it got into his head a little bit. You know what I mean? Alex has his indigenous background from his parents. He likes to honor that and I respect him a lot because he honors the culture of his people, and I help him do that, I’m very supportive.”
“I think in some ways Jiri might have had his own problems if he says that indigenous things are witchcraft and all that. But that played more in our favor. That just helped him.”
Pereira now has an 8-1 record under the UFC umbrella, with six of those wins coming against current or former champions. He remains the ninth UFC fighter to win belts in two divisions, and rumors continue to swirl about his move up to heavyweight in an effort to make history as the first three-division champion in the promotion’s history.
It has been a whirlwind journey and Cruz has travelled in a sidecar for the entire trip. The veteran coach no longer doubts Pereira’s ability to achieve anything he sets out to do.
“(Pereira) has a very special vision (in terms of) pace, distance and angles in the way he (approaches his art),” Cruz said. “It’s almost like he has his own fighting style. He just combines his boxing and kickboxing, and the way he implements (everything) is light years away from the vision he has (for) the game.”