Hollywood cult hero could be in UFC 300 star Alex Pereira’s corner for title fight as shock training footage emerges
UFC 300 main eventer Alex Pereira could have a Hollywood cult hero in his corner for his first light-heavyweight title defence.
The Brazilian bruiser and new favourite tops the bill of the historic Las Vegas card on April 13 against former champion Jamahal Hill.
Pereira, 36, only learned of his headline spot on the card a few hours before it was announced after UFC 298 last weekend.
The kickboxing sensation is already hard at work preparing for the fight – and he’s seemingly enlisted the help of a Hollywood action star for his preparations.
Earlier this week, Pereira shared footage of himself training with actor and Aikido black belt Steven Seagal to his Instagram story.
The clip showed Seagal – who has starred in numerous direct-to-video movies – helping Pereira work on his defence.
The seventh-dan black belt helped the two-weight champion work on redirecting punches and initiating clinches as a counter.
Footage of the training session spread like wildfire and left MMA fans stunned.
One commented: “Pereira [is] about to be unstoppable.”
Another said: “He’s ruining Poatan.”
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And another said: “Bet the house on Poatan in his next fight.”
One remarked: “Bro is gonna be unbeatable now. It’s over. Done.”
Another chimed: “The sensei is back! Just like a taught silva that front kick, ‘Poatan’ will use this on Jamahal ‘salty dreams’ Hill.”
One perplexed fan said: “
Pereira isn’t the first UFC fighter to have ever trained with Seagal, who has previously worked with former long-reigning middleweight champion Anderson Silva and former 205lbs king Lyoto Machida.
And he took credit for Silva’s historic front-kick KO of Vitor Belfort at UFC 126 back in 2012.
He told MMAFighting: “I learned it – a variant of that – in Japan probably 30 or 40 years ago. And I’ve been perfecting it all these years.
“It’s not exactly cut out, it’s just something that I created that is a little bit different and I thought Anderson could learn well.
“Because he’s a natural-born athlete and he has very quick hands and feet and his kicks are good to begin with.
“So I started teaching kicks that I thought he could really hurt people with.
“And in practice, he was knocking people out with body shots.
“And at that point, I knew he was going to start to really make these kicks work.”