Sherdog’s 2022 Breakthrough Fighter of the Year

Every year, we see a handful of fighters who seem to come from out of nowhere, breaking through to new competitive heights and fame. Whether they take the form of a little-heralded prospect rocketing to stardom, as Ciryl Gane did last year, or a well-known veteran who manages a shocking mid-career reinvention, like 2019 winner Jorge Masvidal, those breakthroughs are a reminder of the wonderful unpredictability of mixed martial arts, a challenge to our assumptions as fans and an inspiration to the next year’s crop of would-be superstars.

It should come as no surprise that since the Breakthrough Fighter of the Year award was introduced in 2009, several winners—namely, Jon Jones, Conor McGregor and Israel Adesanya—went on to win Fighter of the Year in subsequent years. Until this year, however, no fighter had ever won both awards in the same year. It is fitting, then, that the first man to pull it off had a mortal connection to Adesanya—but more importantly, had already spent the year compiling a nice list of never-before-seen accomplishments.

When 2022 dawned, Alex Pereira was to most fans a curiosity at best. “Poatan” was a former Glory kickboxing champion who had twice defeated UFC middleweight champ Adesanya in the ring, the second time by crushing knockout, and finally transitioned to mixed martial arts in earnest at age 33. He had made his Octagon debut in November of 2021, knocking out an overmatched Andreas Michailidis, but there was little question that the promotion would fast-track him to a clash with Adesanya as quickly as possible. “The Last Stylebender,” after all, had already conquered his division so thoroughly that he was reduced to rematching former challengers and attempting excursions outside of his weight class in order to stay busy; otherwise, the UFC likely wouldn’t have signed Pereira in the first place. There was every reason to strike while the iron was hot—or at least, before it rusted. As a late starter in MMA with just five professional fights under his belt as he entered his mid-30s, conventional wisdom dictated that even in the relatively thin middleweight division, the towering Brazilian was ripe to be exposed by more experienced, well-rounded fighters. To make it to a title shot would require some savvy matchmaking and more than a little luck. As it happens, he may have benefited from those two things, but not much.

Pereira in 2022 completed the quickest run to a UFC title fight since Brock Lesnar nearly a decade and a half ago, then capped it off on Nov. 12 by headlining the UFC’s biggest card of the year at Madison Square Garden, knocking out the promotion’s longest-reigning male champ, becoming the first fighter to defeat Adesanya at 185 pounds and the first to finish him in MMA at any weight. While his path to the UFC 281 main event was aided by the depleted state of the middleweight division, he faced reasonable tests at every stop along the way. After putting away a borderline talent in Michailidis, Pereira took on fellow up-and-comer Bruno Silva at UFC Fight Night 203 in March, then secured the title shot against surging contender Sean Strickland at UFC 276 in July, in a fight that would likely have resulted in a title shot for Strickland had he won. While naysayers could reasonably bring up the same criticism leveled at any hot striker on the rise—namely, “But he hasn’t faced a wrestler yet”—Silva did try to take Pereira down repeatedly throughout their fight with very limited success, and Pereira can hardly be blamed for Strickland’s failure to explore that possible path to victory.

The culmination of Pereira’s incredible trajectory from novelty signing to UFC champion, his fifth-round stoppage of Adesanya at UFC 281, has already been laid out beautifully in Sherdog’s official play-by-play from that night as well as his “Fighter of the Year” feature, so there is little reason to retrace those steps in detail here. The important thing is that Pereira’s title win was devoid of smoke and mirrors: Adesanya’s gameplan did include trying to take Pereira down, Pereira performed admirably in his first five-round MMA fight, and he had been slightly behind in a competitive fight before zeroing his nemesis with perhaps the deadliest left hook in all of combat sports.

It might be more instructive to take a step back and appreciate the big picture, the overall arc of the most shocking and unlikely title campaign in the modern history of the sport. In naming the signature breakthrough fighter of 2022, the big picture is actually more relevant, since Pereira would probably have won this category even if he had come up short on Nov. 12., though other vote-getters such as new Bellator MMA middleweight kingpin Johnny Eblen and Professional Fighters League women’s lightweight champ Larissa Pacheco—long-suffering, finally avenged of Kayla Harrison—might have made it a closer race.

As 2022 ends, it is still unclear exactly what comes next for the new champ and his division. An immediate rematch with Adesanya—one of the most dominant fighters and biggest stars in the UFC over the past four years—is possible, but Pereira’s arrival as a fresh face must give hope to the cast of contenders who had otherwise been stuck waiting for a second or third chance at gold. Whatever 2023 brings, the UFC middleweight division is a much more interesting place all of a sudden, and that is just one more reason Alex Pereira is the easy choice for Sherdog’s Breakthrough Fighter of the Year.