Alex Pereira efficiently defended his mild heavyweight championship at UFC 303 on Saturday night time, and a clip that was shared on social media helped him formulate a technique for the battle.
Pereira knocked out former UFC mild heavyweight champion Jiri Prochazka with a kick to the pinnacle early within the second spherical. It appeared like Prochazka by no means noticed the kick coming:
Had it not been for a warmup video of Prochazka that surfaced on Instagram earlier than the battle, Pereira may need by no means tried the pinnacle kick. Pereira revealed in his post-fight press convention that his coach, Plinio Cruz, confirmed him a video within the locker room of Prochazka practising his calf kick counters. Pereira observed that Jiri has a nasty behavior of dropping his arms when defending kicks.
“I observed that he was doing the flawed timing, and his timing wasn’t good — I noticed he was too centered on avoiding the calf kick, so he was leaving his arms down and leaving the pinnacle uncovered,” Pereira stated, through Tom Llewellyn of Bloody Elbow. “So, I informed (Cruz), I’m going to discover the excessive kick.”
Cruz additionally confirmed in an interview that the technique stemmed from the video of Prochazka.
“Yeah man, watch out what you put up earlier than your fights, alright?” Cruz stated. “We have been looking on Instagram and I noticed any individual posted a video of us dancing, on the warmup…the way in which he was doing what he assumed was the proper block for the calf kicks was flawed. I confirmed that to Alex and he stated, ‘Let me see that video once more.’ He goes, ‘When he’s doing this, he’s placing his arms down. I’m gonna kick this man within the head.’”
It’s definitely doable that Pereira would have received the battle anyway, however it seems like Prochazka made life a lot simpler for the sunshine heavyweight champ than it needed to be.
