Ex-middleweight champion, Israel Adesanya, and former light heavyweight titleholder, Jamahal Hill, have both competed against current 205-pound kingpin, Alex Pereira. “The Last Stylebender” even tried to help “Sweet Dreams” emerge victorious when Hill battled “Poatan” at UFC 300 early last year; but alas, it was not meant to be.
Pereira will now face what could be his most challenging foe to date in the former of No. 1-ranked title contender, Magomed Ankalaev, atop the UFC 313 pay-per-view (PPV) event, locked and loaded for this Sat. night (March 8, 2025) at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. Adesanya and Hill are divided when it comes to picking a winner.
“Leg kicks. Let’s just address the f*cking elephant in the room,” Adesanya said on YouTube. “That’s going to be a factor in this fight. He might have to become a wrestler in this fight. He might have to go into his bag for this one because he can’t just — I think ego is a part of it. Fight talk. He’s saying what he has to say to get the fight. ‘I’ll stand up with him.’ Yeah, it will start off standing but I don’t think it’s going to keep standing. He’s going to clinch. He’s definitely going to try and take him down. Can he keep him down? Alex Pereira is a black belt in jiu-jitsu now. He’s exponentially getting better. I haven’t really seen him use it much in a fight because he hasn’t had to, but I’ve seen him roll with some people recently and it was a lot different from what I remember. It seems like he flows better on the ground.”
“Ankalaev is going to shoot because he’s going to get tagged on the legs, and again, he could get clocked in the face,” Adesanya continued. “If you say Magomed has good straight shots, that’s something Alex has to watch out for, and he switches a lot. Southpaw will be the best stance for Magomed. Maybe I’m banking too much on the leg kicks. I have experience with it and I know how effective it is. Regardless, I’m going to go with Pereira because of momentum. He’s just on a tear right now. When you have that kind of frame and power, you trust in your skillset so much. Ankalaev [has] speed, but he’ll have to catch Alex when he makes a mistake. So counters. If he catches him on a counter it could be a dangerous night, but I just think this is going to go leg kicks, leg kicks, leg kicks, left hook. Alex Pereira by KO. Four or five. He’s going to knock him out in the fourth or fifth round.”
Hill has it going in the opposite direction, citing the Khalil Rountree Jr. fight.
“I’m gonna get hate for this one — but I get hate anyway, f*ck y’all,” Hill said on YouTube. “I’m probably going to go with Magomed. I just got a feeling that he has more tools to win. Obviously Alex has that one-hit wonder. If he catches you, he can put you away, but I believe Magomed also has that. He has his speed, the patience, the counter. He’s been in this position before and he let the title slip out of his hands once before, and I believe he’ll be a lot more focused, locked in for this. I believe he just has more more ways to win. I’m gonna go with Magomed Ankalaev.”
“Magomed’s striking is seriously being slept on here. It’s seriously, seriously being slept on here,” Hill continued. “I don’t believe that Pereira sits back and kind of wants to fight out of the pocket. He wants to put the pressure on him and land good hard shots from the outside. Problem with that is Magomed is a counter striker. I you go back and you look at his last few fights, he counters. He waits for you to throw, waits for you to overexert yourself. And even off of faints, if you faint and puts your feet in the wrong spot, he’s countering. He counters with combinations, they’re fast, and he mixes up his punches. He has a variety of strikes available at his disposal.”
“There’s the fact that he’s a southpaw,” Hill said. “I believe Pereira has now had a little bit more experience in time to adjust to fighting southpaws, but each southpaw is different. I believe that will still present somewhat of a challenge for him in the beginning, early stages of finding, before he’s able to figure his way out. He wasn’t able to start breaking down Khalil until later in the rounds. And the thing about that was he was able to do that a lot because of the size difference. Magomed doesn’t have that problem, he’s about almost as tall as Pereira is.”
“I believe the wrestling will pay a huge factor,” Hill added. “Whenever Alex tries to corner him, because Alex wants to get you up against the cage, he wants to corner you and then he wants to let those big shots go and hit you with that power and kind of put you away there. I believe Magomed should sit back, be patient and be ready for those counters because that’s when Khalil was landing. He was landing off of counters. Magomed’s counters is bigger, he’s got longer arms, he counters with more combos, and he brings his feet with his punches more. I believe that will be huge for him there.”
Pereira (12-2) is undefeated at light heavyweight, racking up five straight wins with four consecutive knockouts. As for Ankalaev (19-1-1), he squandered his UFC 282 title shot but rebounded with back-to-back victories over Johnny Walker and Aleksandar Rakic. The UFC 313 headliner is scheduled for five, five-minute rounds — assuming it lasts that long.
MMAmania.com will deliver LIVE round-by-round, blow-by-blow coverage of the entire UFC 313 fight card right RIGHT HERE, starting with the early ESPN+ “Prelims” matches at 6 p.m. ET, followed by the remaining undercard balance on ESPNN/ESPN+ at 8 p.m. ET, before the UFC 313 PPV main card start time at 10 p.m. ET on ESPN+ PPV.
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This story originally appeared on MMA Mania
