Alex Pereira efficiently defended his gentle heavyweight championship at UFC 303 on Saturday evening, and a clip that was shared on social media helped him formulate a method for the combat.
Pereira knocked out former UFC gentle 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 combat, 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 working towards his calf kick counters. Pereira observed that Jiri has a nasty behavior of dropping his fingers when defending kicks.
“I observed that he was doing the improper timing, and his timing wasn’t good — I noticed he was too targeted on avoiding the calf kick, so he was leaving his fingers down and leaving the pinnacle uncovered,” Pereira mentioned, via 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 mentioned. “We have been shopping on Instagram and I noticed anyone posted a video of us dancing, on the warmup…the best way he was doing what he assumed was the proper block for the calf kicks was improper. I confirmed that to Alex and he mentioned, ‘Let me see that video once more.’ He goes, ‘When he’s doing this, he’s placing his fingers down. I’m gonna kick this man within the head.’”
It’s actually attainable that Pereira would have received the combat anyway, nevertheless it appears like Prochazka made life a lot simpler for the sunshine heavyweight champ than it needed to be.