Former UFC world champion Alex Pereira has just been getting in some training with Dillon Danis. While Pereira is primarily a striker in his MMA career thanks to his extensive background in kickboxing, but he’s also been building up his grappling skills over the last few years. He was even promoted to brown belt in BJJ towards the end of 2022, just a matter of days after he actually won the title at the UFC 281. Although his title-winning performance didn’t involve that much grappling, he still had to spend years training in Jiu-Jitsu in order to get to that point in his career in the first place.
Pereira dethroned his old foe Israel Adesanya at the event, marking the third time that he had defeated him after the pair met on two occasions during their respective kickboxing careers. Pereira has since lost the middleweight title in his rematch with Adesanya at UFC 287 and decided to move up to the light-heavyweight division in order to pursue a second UFC title. With only 9 professional MMA fights under his belt and 5 fights in the UFC, he’s already chasing after a legacy that the vast majority of fighters will never get anywhere near achieving.
While Alex Pereira has achieved some incredible things in the early days of his MMA career, Dillon Danis has not been so successful. Danis has a perfect 2-0 record competing for Bellator, but hasn’t fought in over four years and even withdrew from a celebrity boxing match against popular YouTube personality KSI. His frequent legal issues, injury troubles, and the large time away from the sport has caused even Bellator CEO Scott Coker to question whether or not he wants to compete any more. Still, Danis is a great grappler and getting training in with him is something that will be helpful for Pereira’s development in the future.
The footage of former UFC middleweight world champion Alex Pereira training with Dillon Danis was uploaded to Pereira’s official YouTube channel:
