UFC 303‘s principal occasion noticed the reigning gentle heavyweight champion, Alex Pereira retain his title in devastating style. 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 swap head kick, flattening Jiri Prochazka, earlier than floor and pound ended issues.
What was so fascinating in regards to the end is that the strike thrown is just not one thing that we’ve seen Pereira throw rather a lot in his UFC profession to this point. That mentioned, there’s a transparent purpose why he selected that strike particularly. Chatting with FullSendMMA after the battle, Alex Pereira’s coach and translator, Plinio Cruz revealed that they noticed an Instagram publish that exposed a flaw within the strategy of Prochazka.
Alex Pereira noticed Jiri Prochazka warming up on Instagram earlier than the battle and observed his palms dropping when he checked the kick. This was what helped him throw the pinnacle kick that knocked Jiri out 🤯 #ufc303 #ufc pic.twitter.com/qnHlwLHW7l
— FULL SEND MMA (@full_send_mma) June 30, 2024
Beneath is the video that seems to indicate Prochazka drop his palms when checking a leg kick. Pereira utilised this data to nice benefit within the battle, scoring a headkick knockout as his opponent dropped his palms, similar to what he did backstage when warming up.
Alex Pereira noticed this video on social media in his altering room and observed Jiri drops his palms after each calf kick verify and determined so as to add the pinnacle kick to the sport plan
CRAZY 🔥 https://t.co/Rg8Md8Xd49 pic.twitter.com/oUrRIEzwGU
— OOC MMA (@oocmma) June 30, 2024
This does result in huge questions with regard to what needs to be filmed previous to the fights. Would Pereira have landed the pinnacle kick with out prior data of a ability flaw in Prochazka? We’ll by no means know, however Prochazka has a proper to be pissed off.
We broke down the battle itself and the complete UFC 303 card on this week’s MMASucka podcast:
