It had to take a real-life superhero to tread the path paved by Anderson Silva, one of the greatest MMA fighters of all time.
So when a guy named “The Last Stylebender” stormed through the division and accepted the torch from The Spider, the MMA world started paying attention.
Like an anime character, Israel Adesanya brought back relevance to the UFC’s Middleweight Division and was on his way to superstardom.
His storyline was flawless—almost flawless.
Lurking in the shadows from the not-so-distant past was an equally formidable Brazilian villain, wielding stone hands made of Adesanya’s kryptonite.
This is the story of the amazing Adesanya vs Pereira rivalry, which spanned different sports, multiple countries, and close to a decade.
Israel Adesanya: The Last StyleBender
Israel “The Last Stylebender” Adesanya gained a lot of hype even before making his UFC debut. His flashy style, infused with elements of anime, reminded fans of Anderson Silva.
Moving from Nigeria to New Zealand, Adesanya had to overcome racism and bullying to fit into an entirely new culture.
These early experiences taught him resilience and self-defense, which helped propel him to become an elite fighter. He also sought refuge in anime and martial arts movies.
Like most Nigerian millennials, his early fighting inspiration was Jackie Chan and the pro wrestler who went by the stage name “Booker T”.
After a few years of training and competing in Australia and New Zealand, Adesanya moved to China to pursue a career in kickboxing, adopting the country and culture for popular acceptance.
On his way to amassing a stacked resume in the Glory Kickboxing organization, he had only one KO loss to a familiar foe in a fight he was totally dominating—the fighter was Alex Pereira.
During the division’s perceived era of decline, Adesanya’s flamboyant displays and post-fight celebrations breathed new life into the sport.
After running through the first few opponents, the UFC presented him with the perfect litmus test to face his idol, Anderson Silva.
The bout was meant to “fraud-check” Izzy or become a classic passing of the torch moment.
One of Silva’s sparring partners for the fight with Izzy was Alex Pereira since his style was the perfect equalizer to Izzy’s style-bending offense.
It didn’t work.
Predictably, Stylebender completely shut the aging Anderson Silva down, mirroring his moves and evading his strikes. It felt like watching a young Silva against the over-the-hill version.
Adesanya was legit. The next stop was the title.
After winning a nail-biting fight against Kelvin Gastellum to claim the interim belt, Izzy dispatched Rob Whitaker to claim the undisputed belt.
He also added a few notches to his belt before deciding to move up to the light heavyweight division for a chance at UFC immortality as the double champ.
Ultimately, Izzy would fall short as Jan Błachowicz stifled his free-flowing attacks with impressive wrestling.
Less than 3 months later, Alex Pereira signed for the UFC.
Alex Pereira: The Stone Hands
Alex “Poatan” Pereira is a Brazilian fighter who battled crime and alcoholism in the favelas to reach the Mount Rushmore of combat sports.
Unlike Adesanya, Pereira had a tougher upbringing, having to drop out of school to work as an apprentice at a tire shop.
As with other boys his age, the path to success went through football, fighting, or crime. Unfortunately, his brother chose the latter, which ultimately cost him his life.
In 2009, Pereira took up kickboxing as a remedy for his drinking habits. But the cure didn’t come immediately.
“I was an alcoholic, full-blown alcoholic. That was just the lifestyle of working in that place. I didn’t know any different. It just crept up on me.”
His first coach, Belocqua Wera, noted that his internal organs were shattered from years of unchecked alcoholism, which limited his ability to absorb body strikes.
But instead of succumbing to the bottle, he chose native cleansing recipes to repair his organs. I can’t vouch for this treatment, but it worked for Poatan.
“Once I started learning about it, I just wanted to learn more and more. It was fascinating to me. And it’s made me more spiritual, more in touch with my ancestry.”
You can see why Alex’s entire persona is a homage to his Pataxó origin. Fighters like Jiri Prochazka have accused him of using voodoo and shamanic rituals to charm his opponents.
Chama!
With a sober mind, he went on a tear in kickboxing, going all the way to become a two-division champion in Glory.
Alex Pereira admitted that reaching the pinnacle of the sport led him into a downward vortex into the green bottle.
He lost his sense of purpose and fell back into bad habits. Coincidentally, it was during one of these drinking bouts that Israel Adesanya would give the interview that changed history.
Early Kickboxing Rivalry
Understanding the Adesanya vs Periera rivalry requires a deep rewind of their clashes.
Currently, Pereira leads the dance 3-1, so how is this even a rivalry?
Their first fight at the 2016 Glory of Heroes 1 event was very close, ending in a controversial unanimous decision in favour of Pereira.
To this day, pundits and fans argue about who actually won the fight, with most opinions favouring Adesanya.
So Round 2 was needed.
During the second fight at 2017 Glory of Heroes 7 in Brazil, the answer came but with an asterisk.
Early in the fight, Izzy rocked Pereira badly, but due to hometown advantage, the 8-count went longer than usual.
Subsequently, Pereira rallied in the final round to deliver the patented left hook to knock Adesanya spark out.
After the fight, Pereira’s son was caught on video taunting Adesanya with the “death fall”.
The Interview that Changed Everything
After Adesanya became champion in the UFC and dominated his division, fans wouldn’t stop mentioning Alex Periera as Izzy’s kryptonite.
One day, an interviewer asked Adesanya about Alex Pereira. A visibly frustrated Izzy went on a rant about how Alex Pereira was irrelevant. He ended the rant by saying that Pereira is always going to be the dude in a bar saying, “I beat that guy one time”.
Coincidentally, Alex Pereira was struggling with sobriety when this interview aired. These words forced him to clean up his act and become completely sober.
He then moved to the US to train with compatriot Glover Texeira.
Pereira Joins the UFC
Although the running myth is that the interview forced the UFC to sign Pereira, the reality is that Izzy’s dominant run left the company with few options.
Pereira came with name recognition and a superior record. He was marketed as Izzy’s kryptonite — the villain in the Stylebender lore.
Alex debuted with a brutal KO, then went on to knock out infamous trash talker Sean Strickland. This performance set him on an inevitable collision course with the champion, Israel Adesanya.
From Izzy’s perspective, this was the opportunity to correct a blotch on his stellar career and put this stalking menace down once and for all.
This script was perfect from the start. Both fighters had a similar style that involved almost no wrestling, a recipe for an all-time fight.
With the storylines set and the dates booked, it was time to fight.
Adesanya vs Pereira 1: A New Star Emerges
The first fight at UFC 281 was meant to be the rubber match and the decider in the rivalry. The UFC Middleweight Gold was also on the line.
As soon as Marc Goddard starts the fight, Alex Pereira lunges with a front kick, which Adesanya avoids. Both fighters were close in the exchanges, with leg kicks traded by both sides. Towards the end of the first round, Adesanya rocks Pereira badly before the bell saves him.
The next three rounds are more of the same, with a constant flurry of exchanges and clinch work mixed in with takedowns for Adesanya.
Going into the fifth round, the champ was ahead and could have coasted to victory. But a rousing speech from Glover Texeira gave Pereira one last push to go a finish.
After a few exchanges in the clinch, they both separate. Then, Izzy throws a checked kick that throws him off balance.
But before he could regain composure, Pereira seizes this tiny lapse to unload a flurry of punches on the champ, who falls to the ground and gets up instantly to weave and bob through the strikes.
The undeterred Pereira knows this is his chance and continues to unload on the visibly wobbled champ.
Marc Goddard had seen enough before stepping in to end the bout.
Alex Pereira becomes the UFC Middleweight Champion and is now 3-0 against Israel Adesanya.
Despite the decisive victory, fans still acknowledged that Izzy had been the better fighter in all their fights. The judges’ scorecard showed that Izzy won all four rounds and was ahead in the fifth before the TKO.
Since the fight was exciting and both fighters wanted to go again, the UFC booked a rematch.
Adesanya vs Pereira 2: One Win Can Flip the Script
Initially, fans didn’t want a rematch because the difference in power was too apparent. Alex “Stone Hands” could end the fight with one strike, even being down four rounds.
During the press conference, Adesanya mentioned that this would be his last fight with Pereira, regardless of the result. Pereira dismissed Adesanya, saying that it would be more of the same, with his hands raised at the end of the fight.
At the start of the 1st round, Pereira comes out with more urgency and self-belief. Adesanya, realizing that this was his final chance at a win, adopts a conservative approach.
The second round is more eventful. Izzy shoots off a few kicks and punches, which Pereira promptly shrugs off with little effort.
After another exchange of combos, Pereira stuns Izzy with a leg kick that visibly hurts the challenge. The crowd gasps in a feeling of collective deja vu as Izzy stumbles towards the cage to evade the strikes.
With Izzy’s back to the cage and curled up in a defensive posture, Pereira starts pounding away with a salvo of body shots, knee strikes, and punches, splitting the guard a few times.
Out of desperation, Adesanya opens up his guard and fires off an overhand right that catches Pereira cold in his tracks. He then follows up with a left hook as Poatan collapses.
Izzy then finishes it up with a hammer fist before Dan Miragliotta jumps in to end the bout.
In a fit of elation, Adesanya fires three arrows into Alex Pereira’s motionless body before breaking the imaginary bow on his knee.
He then turns to Pereira’s crying kids and points to them while doing the death fall—a callback to them mocking him after the 2017 bout.
With that, Adesanya closed the chapter on an epic rivalry by decisively defeating his archnemesis.
The Legacy of the Rivalry
UFC and combat fans will look at this rivalry fondly in the coming years. It ranks up there with the Jones vs. Cormier rivalry.
When Alex knocked out Izzy, he effectively dethroned the last of the Three Kings (Ngannou was released later).
Following the bout, Alex Periera moved up to the Lightheavyweight division to snatch the belt from Jiri Prochazka and avenge his friend Alex Periera.
He managed to achieve Izzy’s dream of becoming a 2-division champion, defeating Jan Blachowicz in the process.
Izzy went on to lose to Sean Strickland and Dricuss Du Plessis in two back-to-back grudge matches.
After Izzy lost to Strickland and Periera won heavyweight gold, he appeared on Mighty Mouse and mentioned that he “beat that guy once.”
How about that for poetic justice.
After Pereira defeated Jiri the first time, he addressed Izzy in his post-fight speech, imploring him not to give up on himself.
He then punctuated the speech with his first English phrase uttered in the octagon: “Adesanya, come to daddy.”
Beyond fighting, both fighters maintain a cordial relationship that comes from mutual respect after spending over one hour fighting each other.
Izzy once mentioned that Alex was the antagonist in his own story. But if you look at it from a different lens, Izzy was the antagonist in Alex Pereira’s anime saga.
Regardless of the camp you support, these two guys were born to fight each other—and we’ll always watch when they fight.
Who wrote this?
Ugo is a sports enthusiast with an undying love for underdog stories.
