Former UFC champion, Israel Adesanya, has become the latest fighter to accuse Alex Pereira of using magic to win his fights, reports www.talksport.com.
‘The Last Stylebender’ suffered consecutive losses, including two knockout defeats, in his first three fights with Pereira in kickboxing and MMA.
However, he finally got a win over ‘Poatan’ at UFC 287 in April 2023.
Adesanya knocked him out cold to win back his middleweight title before the Brazilian fan favourite moved up to light heavyweight and became a two-weight champion.
Pereira KO’d Jiri Prochazka to win the 205lb belt last November.
When they rematched earlier this year, Prochazka repeatedly claimed that his UFC 303 opponent uses black magic and rituals to ensure that he wins fights.
The Czech fighter challenged Pereira to face him without using spirits before he got brutally stopped in the second round of their rematch on June 29.
“Everybody knows that he’s doing these rituals before the fight,” Prochazka said during UFC 303 media day.
“Everybody can feel that what’s around him and what’s going on. And I think Alex can’t fight without that. So, that’s something he’s using normally in fighting.
“This is my challenge to him. To be without some other things. Let the higher power be there in the cage to see who’s the best in the world, in the performance, in the pure performance.”
Prochazka is a pretty eccentric character, who punches trees hundreds of times a day and locked himself in a cabin to train the mind, so no one really took his claim seriously, until now.
Adesanya recently backed up Prochazka during a conversation with Joe Rogan.
Pereira’s biggest rival insists he does use ‘juju’ ahead of his fights and will do so again before he takes on Khalil Rountree Jr. at UFC 307 on Saturday night.
“You know what Jiri said about the whole juju thing? That’s real," Adesanya said on the JRE MMA show.
“The guy beat me in the biggest arena on the planet, Madison Square Garden, the same way as the last time he beat me in Brazil.
“I was beating his a***, had him hurt at the end of the first round and then he gets me in the last round.
"It’s his spirit, his whatever, like ancestors or his people, that are praying for him. I’ve got prayer warriors as well. My mum and dad be fasting, and they have people in the spirit world praying for me.
“The way he carries himself. Something about him just, he knows how to recover well.
“So, I just knew I could get him, but after that he knocked me out in the biggest arena in the world. I’m just like, ‘Let’s do that s*** again, Dana’ [White]’.
