Dana White gave Alex Pereira his next assignment, and it is the scariest puncher available to him. Pereira will face Sergei Pavlovich in the co-main event of UFC 335 on December 12 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, a five-round heavyweight fight White announced on Nina Drama’s Kick stream during UFC 332 before the UFC made it official.
The main event that night is Charles Oliveira defending the BMF title against Diego Lopes, who moves up to lightweight for the first time in the UFC. Oliveira took that belt from Max Holloway by five-round unanimous decision at UFC 326. Bo Nickal against Joe Pyfer at middleweight is also on the card.
Where Pereira actually stands
Pereira (13-4, 10-3 UFC) is a former middleweight and light heavyweight champion who currently holds no belt at all. He vacated the 205-pound title earlier this year to chase heavyweight history, then ran into Ciryl Gane at UFC Freedom 250 in June and got stopped in the second round with the interim heavyweight title on the line.
That loss cost him more than one night. Gane has since been elevated to undisputed champion after Tom Aspinall vacated the title in September because of ongoing eye problems, and Gane defends against Josh Hokit at UFC 334 on November 14 at Madison Square Garden. Pereira is ranked third at heavyweight. Pavlovich is ranked second.
Nobody has officially called this a title eliminator, and the UFC has not promised the winner anything. It does not need to. Gane needs a challenger after November, and these are the two highest-ranked contenders not already booked against him.
Pavlovich is the wrong kind of test
Pavlovich (21-3, 9-3 UFC) has won three straight, beating Jairzinho Rozenstruik and Waldo Cortes-Acosta before erasing Tallison Teixeira in 39 seconds at UFC Macau on May 30. His notable recent setback was the 2023 interim title loss to Aspinall. Seven of his nine UFC wins came by knockout, and almost none of them required patience.
That is a brutal stylistic match for Pereira at this weight. Pereira’s game is built on absorbing the first half of a fight, chopping at a leg, and waiting for one left hook to land clean. It worked beautifully at 185 and 205 pounds because he could afford to lose early minutes. Heavyweight does not hand out early minutes, and Gane already showed in June that Pereira’s margin for error up here is much thinner than it used to be.
DraftKings opened Pavlovich at -135 with Pereira at +114. That line looks right.
The pick
Pavlovich by knockout inside two rounds. Pereira will have his moments, because he always does, and if this fight reaches the third round he probably wins it on accumulated damage and composure. Reaching the third round is the whole problem.
A Pavlovich win gives the UFC a clean, violent challenger for whoever survives Gane against Hokit, and a heavyweight title fight that sells itself on nothing but power. A Pereira win is messier and far more lucrative: the biggest pay-per-view draw in the sport, one fight from becoming the first three-division champion in UFC history, with the rest of the division waiting behind him. The promotion would obviously prefer that version. The matchup points the other way.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.