Could we get Jon Jones vs. Alex Pereira next?
Pereira is riding high from a huge and dominant win over Magomed Ankalev at UFC 320, but now he’s aiming for someone bigger: Jon Jones.
“Thanks for congratulating me, but all I want is a superfight,” Pereira said at the UFC 320 post-fight press conference. “I want to fight at heavyweight.”
Now this wasn’t a spur of the moment decision as Pereira had contemplated the heavyweight move for quite some time now. However, once he dropped the belt to Ankalaev, his focus returned to regaining the UFC Light Heavyweight Championship.
But despite his win, Pereira opted to not call out Jones since the former UFC Heavyweight Champion is dealing with a loss of his brother Arthur Jones, earlier in the week.
“With all due respect, with all the respect I have for the situation … I was going to ask for Jon Jones at the White House, but with everything that happened, it’s not the right time to talk about it,” Pereira said.
“I want a superfight. It would be at the White House against Jon Jones. That’s a superfight.”
How does Dana White feel about this situation?
The UFC CEO isn’t a big fan of the potential move, but he’s certainly open to it.
“So today I was at work and I had a bunch of meetings over there this afternoon and I went over to the [UFC Performance Institute] and [Alex Pereira] was over in the P.I.” White revealed during the UFC 320 post-fight press conference. “I’m like well you’re the last guy I expected to see here today. What are you doing here? They’re telling me ‘we want to fight at heavyweight.’ I said how about we win tonight and focus on tonight and then we can talk about heavyweight.
“I don’t know. There’s still fights here in this division but we’ll see. This guy has been an absolute stud for us. He’s on vacation in Australia, flies over and fights because somebody fell out. He fights when he’s hurt. He doesn’t care. He wants to fight everybody. He wants to move up to heavyweight. He’s a dream to have in this organization.”
Jones is dealing with tragedy at the moment. He hasn't formally responded to Alex’s want for a superfight against him, though the UFC Light Heavyweight Champion did pay his respects to Arthur Jones, something that Jon acknowledged.
Given Dana’s hesitation on wanting to book Jones in anything these days, this match may be a challenge to book despite it being a huge draw on paper. We’ll see if this goes beyond conversation in the following months.