On This Day — November 11: Pereira's Second Crown at UFC 295
Madison Square Garden has a way of scheduling history. On November 11, 2023, UFC 295 put two title fights on top of a card in which every single main-card fight ended in a finish — and crowned two champions who had arrived by opposite roads: one a kickboxer collecting divisions at record speed, the other an Englishman who said yes to the scariest heavyweight alive on two weeks' notice.
Madison Square Garden has a way of scheduling history. On November 11, 2023, UFC 295 put two title fights on top of a card in which every single main-card fight ended in a finish — and crowned two champions who had arrived by opposite roads: one a kickboxer collecting divisions at record speed, the other an Englishman who said yes to the scariest heavyweight alive on two weeks' notice.
2023 — Pereira takes a second crown, and the argument
Alex Pereira's seventh UFC fight was for the vacant light heavyweight title, against Jiří Procházka, the samurai who had given the belt up injured. Pereira spent the first round doing what he does — chopping the legs out from under the fight — before Procházka took him down and held him there, a reminder that the new division had wrestlers in it. In the second, Procházka surged forward behind his chaos, and Pereira, retreating, countered with a right hook and a left. Procházka fell onto Pereira's legs; elbows followed, and Marc Goddard stepped in at 4:08.
Half the arena thought it was early. Pereira did not: "I landed a right hook and a left, he fell down on my legs — it was not a take down. So I don't think it was a bad stoppage." The record book is agnostic about the debate. It records that Pereira became the ninth two-division champion in UFC history, that he did it in seven fights — breaking Randy Couture's mark of ten — and that he is the first man ever to hold the middleweight and light heavyweight belts. However the stoppage ages, the speed of the ascent is untouchable: a former GLORY champion who had debuted in the UFC just two years earlier now owned two of its divisions.
2023 — Aspinall's 69 seconds
The co-main event was an emergency. Jon Jones's injury had scrapped the heavyweight title fight, and the UFC built an interim bout from its two most dangerous spares: Sergei Pavlovich, who had knocked out six straight men in the first round, and Tom Aspinall, who accepted with roughly two weeks to prepare. Pavlovich landed the first hard punch of the fight. It was also nearly his last act in it: Aspinall stood in the pocket, answered right-left-right, and Pavlovich was down and finished at 1:09 of the first round, outlanded ten significant strikes to one.
Aspinall became England's third UFC champion and its first at heavyweight, and his interview was the night's most honest piece of television: "I've never been as scared in my life as fighting this guy. But I've got a lot of power, too, and I believe in myself. This belt is dedicated to my father!" Between the two headliners, MSG watched a man win a belt he had two years to chase and a man win one he had two weeks to fear.
2017 — Norfolk's bloodbath
Six years earlier, November 11 belonged to a Fight Night at the Ted Constant Convocation Center in Norfolk, Virginia, where Dustin Poirier and former champion Anthony Pettis produced one of the bloodiest main events of the decade. Elbows opened both men up; the second round was a scramble-drunk, crimson war of sweeps and near-triangles, and in the third Poirier took the back, locked a body triangle, and rolled — popping Pettis's rib and forcing the tap at 2:08. Fight of the Night, and the win that moved Poirier from action fighter to contender.
The co-main event was nearly as famous. Matt Brown had billed his fight with Diego Sanchez as his retirement bout; instead he caught a body kick, walked Sanchez to the fence, and knocked him unconscious with a standing right elbow at 3:44 of the first round — one of the great elbow knockouts in UFC history. Performance of the Night. Brown, unsurprisingly, decided retirement could wait.
Also on this day
- 2023, New York: Benoît Saint-Denis head-kicked Matt Frevola unconscious at 1:31 of the first round — one of five Performance of the Night bonuses on the night.
- 2023, New York: Jéssica Andrade stopped Mackenzie Dern in the second round to snap a three-fight losing streak.
- 2017, Norfolk: Raphael Assunção knocked out Matthew Lopez in the third round for the night's other Performance of the Night bonus.
Two belts, one rib, one elbow: November 11 does not do quiet.
