Paulo Costa is quickly leveling up his understanding of MMA as a business. UFC middleweight recently scrutinized comments Khamzat Chimaev appeared to have made randomly about himself facing newly crowned champ Alex Pereira.
UFC 282 event will take place on December 10, 2022 at the T-Mobile Arena in Nevada, Las Vegas, United States. According to a tweet Khamzat Chimaev made several days ago, the event will feature him taking on Pereira.
We were initially skeptical about the so called contract considering Pereira just competed at UFC 281, and is unlikely to make a quick turnaround considering he took part in a 5 round event and extensively weight cuts to make Middleweight.
But – the news has since gone out that Jiri Prochazka was forced to vacate the Light heavyweight title in the fall out from a crippling shoulder injury – leaving UFC scrambling for a title event for UFC 282.
Pereira was dubbed “easy money” by Chimaev after his fifth-round TKO of Israel Adesanya at UFC 281 earlier this month. Chimaev predicted that Pereira will defeat the new champion in one [round].
Costa recently detailed to Submission Radio why he would choose Chimaev over Pereira if thy competed in the Octagon.
Costa said,
“It’s funny. Yeah, he wants to beat Alex in Rio De Janeiro. Yeah bro, he’s smart, he’s smart. I think if he fought Alex, he will be a big problem to Alex, because Alex has no grappling. You know, MMA is so different to kickboxing.”
“But yeah, I think odds is against Alex if that fight happens. But I don’t think they will be going, I don’t think that the fight will happen.”
“I’d like to fight to him. I ask him to fight him a couple of weeks ago. He said, ‘No, I will still [compete] in 170, I will not go to 185’. But he saw a huge opportunity to get the belt easily.”
It seems doubtful that Chimaev will really receive the next chance to take on Pereira considering UFC has already announced that the title bout will be replaced with Ankalaev vs former champ Jan Blachowicz for the now vacant title.