To say 2024 was Alex Pereira’s best year in combat sports, would be an understatement. He defended his title thrice and did it emphatically with knockout wins. But when we look at his personal life, well, things were a bit tumultuous, as he had some relationship issues. However, it looks like ‘Poatan’ has started 2025 with a promising development in his personal life according to his latest social media post.

Just last year, Alex Pereira saw his relationship with ex-girlfriend Merle Christine fall out at the end of 2023, which Pereira also touched upon in the start of 2024. And it didn’t seem like a mutually respectful breakup, as the end of their relationship seemed a bit sour. His ex-girlfriend even shared a message on Instagram, where while she announced the breakup, decided to keep the reasons private while alluding to something ugly. “I broke up with Alex btw, and if I would start to speak about the reasons here it wouldn’t end good guys. Peace out,” Christine stated via Instagram.

Cut to 2025 and Alex Pereira seems to have started dating again after fans came across his recent Instagram story. While wishing everybody a happy new year with the caption, “Feliz ano novo,” ‘Poatan’ posted a photo of him with a woman who’s never been seen with the UFC light heavyweight champion before. Also, in that story, Pereira tagged an account with the username ‘poesiadeamor’, which turned out to be a page that talked about relationships. Now, we do have the identity of the woman standing beside Alex Pereira, and her name is Aline Antoniassi, who’s just an acquaintance of the UFC star.

We still don’t know if Alex Pereira is currently dating Aline Antoniassi based on his recent Instagram story. However, many rumors of the light heavyweight champion being in a relationship floated around, especially after his breakup with Merle Christine. Let’s take a look at one of those rumors.

Alex Pereira’s past relationship rumors

Earlier in 2024, Alex Pereira once addressed his thoughts on fellow Brazilian UFC fighter Polyana Viana after fans and journalists saw footage of him training with the 32-year-old strawweight star. He’d talk about her as a fighter and as a person in a positive light, going to even claim that Viana’s got a lot of “charisma”, and envisions her getting to the top of her division in the future.

“Polyana is a very simple person. She is conquering her own space. I see a lot of potential in her. Whoever is in the UFC, their dream is to become a champion. And she said, ‘That’s my dream.”, Alex Pereira told the media during UFC 300 fight week. “I said, me and my team could help her achieve her goal. She is very charismatic. I am not as charismatic… [I] think the fact that her simplicity plays a big part in it.”

These statements and the videos of their training sessions all culminated in rumors surfacing about Alex Pereira and Polyana Viana dating, but nothing was confirmed. What do you think about the light heavyweight champion’s latest dating speculations? Drop your comments below.