UFC 307: Alex Pereira's run is a thing to behold and savor

Alex Pereira continued his 2024 dominance with a UFC 307 knockout of Khalil Rountree Jr. (Stephen R. Sylvanie, Imagn Images)

Because the UFC is such a mine field in the combat landscape, there is something about Alex Pereira’s walkout that qualifies in the realm of cherishable moments. It is, of course, more theatrical than most. There’s that ritualistic, slow-approaching warrior step he does as he enters the arena, throwing back to old Paxató traditions us Westerners can only guess at. There’s the arrow he fires off toward whatever poor fool is standing in the cage waiting for him, followed by the primal scream. And, of course, the piercing stony-eyed stare, his dark eyes two little windows into the abyss.

That’s all very poetic — but really, it’s that the stuff he’s pulling off just can’t freaking last. It just can’t. It’s a beautiful fleeting thing for a 37-year-old segue fighter who came in as a backstory B-side to Israel Adesanya to give us these moments. It’s impossible that he can handle the escalation of stakes with unburdened ease. The winning of titles. The defending of them. That he can step into any event, whether it’s at Madison Square Garden or a gala affair like UFC 300, and ignite a fanbase through a collective sense of awe.

He did it again at UFC 307 in Salt Lake City, waiting out Khalil Rountree’s headhunting techniques for as long as he had to. Even his patience tells the story of a hunter. The power coming at him merely kicked up his sense of danger, but the sniper in him never strayed. Using the space between them like a force shield in which to exact his magic, Peirera assessed, deflected, deked, stalked and finally struck. He punished the aggression, put a tax on the big shots coming his way. The jab became the most wicked reprimand in the game. The leg kicks took their toll too, setting up the kill.

Alex Pereira vs. Khalil Rountree Jr. became pure theater by the championship rounds. (Stephen R. Sylvanie, Imagn Images)

And the kill? It’s a blur of violence that ended up creating a hero of Rountree and his ability to take punishment. By the end, which came in the waning moments of the fourth round, Rountree was swinging at ghosts. Divested of his resources, there he was still waving punches at the thing that was happening to him. The last actions of his hopes and ultimately his delusions. A wilderness. It felt heroic because Pereira had let the muscle-bound man exhaust himself before coming on like the blood-dimmed tide, leaving only his instincts to survive. In the end, Pereira brought out that toughness as part of the story.

That’s what great ones do.

And it goes into Pereira’s lore, which was created through the Adesanya rivalry and has now become the biggest show in the UFC. Did Rountree deserve the title fight? If we’re quibbling, maybe not. Magomed Ankalaev was probably more deserving. But that is our quibbling. We can wring our hands all we want, but Pereira just says yes to whoever the UFC presents him, and then treats the man signed on to the same rude treatments. Rountree joined the ranks of Jiří Procházka, Jamahal Hill, and Jan Blachowicz in those who tried. That’s a murderer’s row, and only Blachowicz was sturdy enough to last the distance. Otherwise, there’d be no need for judges.

Or of anything else, really. UFC 307 had moments, but it was largely headed toward being a lackluster affair. Forget about the “atrocious” judging and fights that didn’t deliver, Pereira has a habit of creating the lasting impression and stealing the show. He did it at UFC 295. He did it at UFC 303. He does it because he doesn’t have another way.

No, it can’t last. It won’t.

That’s the drug of fighting, that whatever feels impossible actually is. Yet the sense of fleeting is exhilaratingly drowned out by the frequency in which he appears. Who fights that well, that much? At some point Pereira will lose, maybe in his next fight against Ankalaev. Maybe against Tom Aspinall, or — can you imagine — Jon Jones. But that certainty only feeds into the high. That Pereira defies all conventions and trends, fending off what must be inevitable one pantomimed arrow at a time, doesn’t make sense, and it doesn’t need to.

What is forever is what he’s already done. Since losing his middleweight title at the beginning of 2023, Pereira is 5-0 as a light heavyweight. In that same period of time, Jones and the company’s biggest draw, Conor McGregor, have fought a grand total of zero times combined. In fact, Pereira has stood in for each of them in events they were penciled in as headliners for. Pereira has been the UFC’s savior of 2024. Unflinching and with impossible shoes to fill, he happily goes without them when needed. Even with Dana White’s guardedness on Jones being the GOAT and the pound-for-pound king, inactivity has made him a cold campfire.

Meanwhile Pereira keeps rolling.

In this game the word “warrior” gets thrown around so much that the meaning gets lost. Yet what do we mean by warrior? Because it would seem that Alex Pereira — in his incredible run through three title defenses this year alone, along with the fearlessness to never say no — has the essential ingredients. That walkout alone is so intense, you wonder how long it can last.

Perhaps the beauty is in not knowing, but enjoying the hell out of it for as long as it does.