Alex Pereira responds to Daniel Cormier’s criticism over decision to corner Sean Strickland at UFC 312

Alex Pereira has responded to Daniel Cormier’s criticism of his decision to corner Sean Strickland back at UFC 312.

As we know, Alex Pereira will return to action at UFC 313. He is set to defend his UFC light heavyweight championship against Magomed Ankalaev, in what is one of the most highly anticipated fights of the year thus far.

RELATED: Daniel Cormier explains why he’s concerned about Alex Pereira’s UFC 313 preparation

While many are excited to see it, some wonder whether or not Pereira is training as hard as he should be. One reason for that is his recent appearance down under to corner Sean Strickland at UFC 312.

In a recent interview, Pereira responded to these concerns – and in particular, comments made by Daniel Cormier.

Pereira responds to Cormier

“Sean and I have a good friendship now and a lot of people are thinking that I just went out there to be in his corner,” he told Bloody Elbow in an exclusive chat as part of his role as Stake ambassador. “But I had these prior commitments in Australia and it just ended up that it worked out for me to be over there.

“I heard people saying ‘oh he doesn’t even speak English, what difference does it make him being there?’ But we have the same kind of energy, we’re on the same vibe, both fighting in the same company so there’s a lot of good rapport between us.

“I can say to Daniel Cormier and a bunch of the other specialists saying that I shouldn’t have gone out there that I’ve been in this situation before. It’s actually been worse before when I was in Australia and had signed up to fight but didn’t even know I was going to do that.

“This time it was all very planned out, I knew what I was going to do. I took basically my whole team down there, I had eight people in Australia with me and we knew exactly what to do so we had it all very well planned out.

“A lot of people are talking about the travelling and all of the trips, maybe it’s not the ideal situation. But I feel like I’m very experienced with that and I’ve done this a million times to be honest.”

Quotes via Bloody Elbow