With the performance he showed against Israel Adesanya, Dricus Du Plessis garnered quite a bit of affection from the world of mixed martial arts. The heat between the two was indeed too hot for the fight fans to handle, but the netizens didn’t expect DDP to submit Adesanya. Impressed with the middleweight champion’s performance, Alex Pereira took to social media and hinted at returning to the middleweight division and fighting Du Plessis.

Now, Robert Whittaker has weighed in on Pereira’s decision to return to the MW category. Let’s see what the middleweight #3 had to say.

Robert Whittaker reminds Alex Pereira of Dricus Du Plessis’ strength

On the 26th of August, Whittaker made an appearance on Submission Radio and had an elaborate talk with Denis Shkuratov. As the conversation proceeded, the podcast host brought out Pereira’s hint at returning to the MW category and fighting for the MW belt once again. He asked the New Zealander if he thought the Brazilian champ’s claims were legitimate. 

‘The Reaper’ was utterly flabbergasted at Pereira’s thoughts. While climbing to the next weight category was an easier task, getting back down to a lower weight class exacted a heavier toll on the fighters. And Whittaker was well aware of this. He said, “Well, I hope not really, right? I think, honestly I don’t think that’s a good fight for him. Like, yeah, I don’t think that’s a good fight for him. But also like you move up to light heavyweight, moving back down is tricky. And it’s not like you move up for one fight. He’s stayed up there. He’s been fighting up there for a while now. So, it’s, it would be, it would take a lot out of him to get down.” But he didn’t leave out the hurdle that Du Plessis poses.

Shkuratov, like many others, was intrigued by Whittaker’s claims. He asked for the MW #3’s view on the possibility of Du Plessis defeating Pereira. Whittaker replied, “Well, Alex gets hit, okay? And Dricus likes getting hit. So, I don’t- It’s hard to see someone with the amount of power to stop Dricus from walking forward into here. And Dricus hits hard. Saw that in the fight against Adesanya. Adesanya has got like a really good chin. And Dricus was still hurting him enough to, you know, to make him uncomfortable.”  

Du Plessis and Sean Strickland also warned Pereira about returning to the MW division. But the man with the hands of stone seemed pretty confident in his decision.

‘Poatan’ receives blunt warnings from UFC middleweights but still stands strong

As soon as the light heavyweight champion made his desire to come back down to the 185-pound category known to the world, Du Plessis swooped in to warn the Brazilian. He claimed that if Adesanya knocked Pereira out, ‘Poatan’ didn’t want to be in the Octagon against him. Even though Pereira had hands of stone, Du Plessis’ grappling would be like Kryptonite for him. In a press conference, ‘Stillknocks’ raised the heat by saying, “I honestly don’t think Alex Pereira should drop down to 185. If he wants to, great. But then we’re gonna hear the excuses-“

That was when the switch flipped inside Pereira and he claimed that he never gave any kind of excuse about this weight messing him up. He revealed that he had dropped his weight about 8 times to as low as 178 pounds. The LHW champ reminded the fighting community of his words, “I could do this again. Go down to middleweight. But I need some time. Need to recover.” But he didn’t refrain himself from quoting that Du Plessis was the one acting scared.

Later on, Strickland gave Pereira a viable option if he wanted to fight Du Plessis. It was a bit of advice for Du Plessis to go up to 205 pounds and take the fight to Pereira. That was indeed the only way that the matchup could entertain the fight fans, as per Strickland. 

What do you think of Pereira’s decision to drop his weight? Let us know what you think in the comments down below.