Alex Pereira has announced his return to the UFC and demanded a rematch with Ciryl Gane, following his knockout defeat in June. The former two-division champion is confident the UFC will grant his wish.
Pereira moved up to heavyweight in June in a bid to become a three-weight world champion. He suffered a brutal knockout in the second round against Gane in their interim title fight on the White House lawn.
Pereira calls for another shot at Gane
After taking time away from the cage, Pereira took to social media on Tuesday evening to announce he is back training and ready to return to competitive action. The 39-year-old demanded another crack at Gane and believes the rematch is likely to happen.
"I'm seeing many opinions but I think the fight that makes sense is Ciryl Gane," he said. "That's the fight. I'm going to work on that and from what I'm seeing, it's something that's going to happen. How the last fight [ended], there were illegal shots. I think now with another opportunity I can come back and show what I can do, what I can achieve, which is the third belt. I'm very excited for that and I'll work for that."
Gane's next opponent and Aspinall's recovery
Gane is due to fight Tom Aspinall next after winning the interim title in June. Aspinall has not fought since October when his grudge match with Gane was waved off in the opening round after repeated eye pokes from the Frenchman left the Brit unable to continue. In the months that followed, the heavyweight champion has undergone multiple surgeries on both eyes.
Aspinall has been cleared to return to training, but his return date remains a mystery. The Salford scrapper was forced to address his future recently amid reports that he had left the UFC. "I'm not leaving the UFC. I've never said I am in any interview and any words that have been taken from others today are simply not true. We are talking with the UFC daily and they will update you guys always," he said in a post on social media.
Pereira slams Gane's tactics
If the heavyweight champion is unable to fight this year, it could present Pereira with the opportunity to rematch Gane. The Brazilian slammed the Frenchman for his dirty tactics in their fight in Washington, insisting that a number of 'illegal shots' contributed to his defeat.
"I was getting up. It became difficult to recover," Pereira said on his YouTube channel not long after the fight. "I believe that if it wasn't for those shots I could have possibly recovered. Maybe not, but they were very hard shots and illegal. This guy's desperate. He landed a punch that he couldn't even believe, then he wanted to end the fight no matter what."
He added: "What's upset me is I warned him beforehand but the guy doesn't have the guts. I said 'look, eye poke, groin strikes, those things can happen, but this guy has a long history of it - dirty shots, throwing punches to the back of the head, elbows'."
