Two-weight UFC world champion Alex Pereira recently issued a challenge to Anthony Smith for a grappling match with $50,000 on the line, and now it seems like Smith will happily accept. Pereira is known as a kickboxer first and foremost, and it’s his elite striking that he’s relied on to reach the highest points of his professional MMA career so far. Pereira has also worked hard to improve his grappling ready for when it might be needed and he’s even been promoted to BJJ black belt along the way. He hasn’t really needed to display his Jiu-Jitsu during his rise to the top of the MMA world just yet, but he clearly still feels confident in it regardless.
This isn’t the first time that Alex Pereira and Anthony Smith have traded words either, and they’ve debated having a potential grappling match in the past. Smith answered the most recent challenge in a post-fight interview:
“What did he say? Alex Pereira said he would put up $50,000, and I start off his back. So I start off his back, hooks in, and I’ve got 5 minutes to finish him, and he wants to put $50,000 on it. I’ll take his $50,000. I’ll take his money. If I start off his back, I’ll choke the sh*t out of him.”
Of course, Smith has proven time and time again during his MMA career that he has some fantastic grappling and he’s even competed in multiple Jiu-Jitsu matches for major promotions like UFC Fight Pass Invitational and Quintet. That’s no doubt part of the reason that Smith feels so confident in accepting any challenge for a grappling match with Pereira. He was then asked by the press if he thought that Pereira’s black belt was fraudulent and to his credit, he explained that he wouldn’t go that far:
“I don’t know what I meant when I said that, I would never call anybody’s black belt fraudulent. Maybe I meant, I don’t know, like, I don’t believe that Alex Pereira is probably a high-level black belt in the gi. I don’t think he’s, probably, like crazy competitive, like in an IBJJF format, but I would never call anybody’s Jiu-Jitsu black belt fraudulent.”
Given that Pereira has always been a striker above all else, this would be a pretty reasonable take. He’s spent a long time training with top grapplers, but there’s simply far too much ground for him to make up if he was to ever face off against a dedicated and competitive Jiu-Jitsu black belt in a grappling match. Professional MMA fighters have generally had a difficult time keeping up with elite BJJ competitors and there’s no reason to think that Pereira would be an exception to that. Smith went on to explain that he wouldn’t have any less respect for Pereira because of that though:
“He’s probably put the time in, and if it’s from Glover Teixeira, I’ve got a tough time really arguing with that too much. I think there’s levels to black belts, you know what I mean? But I would respect his black belt just like I would anybody else’s.”
Interestingly, Smith actually faced Pereira’s coach Teixeira in the co-main event of UFC Fight Pass Invitational 4. He lost a unanimous decision to Teixeira in that match so it would be interesting to see him face off against one of his students instead. Unfortunately for fans who might be interested in the prospect of a grappling match between Pereira and Smith, it still seems pretty unlikely even though both men are publicly open to the idea. There are a lot of moving parts when it comes to putting something like this together and as the reigning UFC light-heavyweight world champion, Pereira will have a lot more money waiting for him elsewhere.
Connect Cast shared the original challenge for a $50,000 grappling match that Alex Pereira made to Anthony Smith in a recent post to their official Instagram account:
