Consolation fight: Losing McGregor-Chandler hurts, but Pereira-Procházka sets up better for UFC 303

By Case Keefer (contact)

Thursday, June 27, 2024 | 2 a.m.

Alex Pereira wouldn’t go anywhere without his UFC title belt after first becoming a champion, until he got an image of it tattooed across his entire right underarm.

Jiří Procházka found motivation in his last fight from opponent Aleksandar Rakic calling him, “a fake samurai,” and vowed to let him know, “who I am in the cage.”

Procházka went on to viciously knock out Rakic in the second round of their bout at UFC 300, a few fights before Pereira did the same to Jamahal Hill in the night’s main event.

There’s no question fighting and a drive to be the best is the sole focus for Pereira and Procházka—the pair that now faces off in the main event of UFC 303 on June 29 at T-Mobile Arena—at this point of their careers.

The same can’t be said for UFC 303’s originally scheduled main event between Conor McGregor and Michael Chandler. McGregor broke a toe in training camp to nix his long-awaited return fight slotted as the capper to the UFC’s annual International Fight Week.

McGregor remains the biggest star in combat sports, so it’s inevitable that the card lost a lot of luster without him. Pay-per-view sales and worldwide media coverage of UFC 303 will now be down precipitously.

But UFC 303 probably wound up with a better fight because of the first cancellation of McGregor’s career—he used to pride himself on never pulling out of a fight regardless of the circumstances.

No one knew what to expect from the 35-year-old McGregor after he hadn’t fought in three years and seemed to be spending more time in clubs and on his yacht than in the gym, based on social media posts. The 38-year-old Chandler had also been inactive since November 2022 as he waited and held out hope for a chance to face McGregor and benefit from the massive payday that accompanies it.

A rematch between the 36-year-old Pereira and 31-year-old Procházka for the UFC’s light heavyweight title holds no such concerns regarding quality. Both strikers have shown an obsession with building their legacies since breaking into the UFC relatively late in their careers, within the last four years.

Pereira had previously established himself as a world-class kickboxer while Procházka was a champion in Japan’s Rizin organization, and both picked up where they left off in the octagon.

Pereira is one of 10 fighters in UFC history to win championships at two different weight classes. He initially captured the light heavyweight belt in November of last year by knocking out Procházka in the second round of the main event of UFC 295 at Madison Square Garden.

No one expected a rematch to come this quickly, but the pair’s diligence in nonstop training and wishes to stay active made them a natural option for a short-notice replacement when McGregor officially pulled out 16 days before fight night.

Pereira didn’t even want to wait this long for his next fight. After beating Hill in April, he publicly asked for the UFC to let him headline a card in May in his native Brazil. 

“I want to keep fighting,” Pereira said through a translator after UFC 300. “You have to be challenged. When we train for a fight, we know there’s a great challenge ahead of us and I’m motivated by everything that’s happening right now. It makes me evolve and do my best.”

Procházka, a native of the Czech Republic, employs a similar mindset. He’s been an outspoken practitioner of bushido, a moral code based on the principles of samurais dating back more than 500 years ago.

He forgave Rakic for mocking the lifestyle after his last fight and explained what it meant to him.

“Our brain, our minds need to understand our lives and what we’re doing, why we are doing that, by some theory, some ideas,” Procházka told MMAFighting.com. “These ideas about bushido moral code help me to be honest to the way that I’m following. That’s all. You have to find something that resonates with you, and samurai ideas resonate with me.”

The warrior mentality is even more inherent in Pereira, whose grandparents were part of Brazil’s indigenous Pataxó tribe that battled the Portuguese in the 1500s.

One of the many places Pereira brought his initial UFC championship belt, and now also his second, was the Pataxós’ reservation outside of Bahia, Brazil. Pereira continues to wear traditional Pataxó headwear and face paint during weigh-ins before his fights.

The UFC annually aims to celebrate its fighting spirit, multicultural appeal and global reach with International Fight Week.

There’s not a better matchup that fits all the criteria than Pereira vs. Procházka.

This story appeared in Las Vegas Weekly.