UFC 303‘s major occasion noticed the reigning gentle heavyweight champion, Alex Pereira retain his title in devastating trend. After a dominant first spherical which noticed Poatan rating a knockdown within the dying seconds, the Brazilian made a press release within the second. Simply 5 seconds into the second spherical, Pereira landed a vicious change head kick, pulling down Jiri Prochazka, earlier than floor and pound ended issues.
What was so attention-grabbing concerning the end is that the strike thrown isn’t one thing that we’ve seen Pereira throw rather a lot in his UFC profession so far. That stated, there’s a transparent motive why he selected that strike particularly. Talking to FullSendMMA after the struggle, Alex Pereira’s coach and translator, Plinio Cruz revealed that they noticed an Instagram put up that exposed a flaw within the strategy of Prochazka.
Alex Pereira noticed Jiri Prochazka warming up on Instagram earlier than the struggle and seen his arms dropping when he checked the kick. This was what helped him throw the top kick that knocked Jiri out 🤯 #ufc303 #ufc pic.twitter.com/qnHlwLHW7l
— FULL SEND MMA (@full_send_mma) June 30, 2024
Under is the video that seems to point out Prochazka drop his arms when checking a leg kick. Pereira utilised this data to nice benefit within the struggle, scoring a headkick knockout as his opponent dropped his arms, similar to what he did backstage when warming up.
Alex Pereira noticed this video on social media in his altering room and seen Jiri drops his arms after each calf kick test and determined so as to add the top kick to the sport plan
CRAZY 🔥 https://t.co/Rg8Md8Xd49 pic.twitter.com/oUrRIEzwGU
— OOC MMA (@oocmma) June 30, 2024
This does result in large questions with regard to what must be filmed previous to the fights. Would Pereira have landed the top kick with out prior information of a talent flaw in Prochazka? We are going to by no means know, however Prochazka has a proper to be pissed off.
We broke down the struggle itself and your complete UFC 303 card on this week’s MMASucka podcast: