Alice Pereira wanted to become the youngest woman to sign with the UFC, joining the promotion just days after her 19th birthday, but ultimately lost a decision to Montserrat Rendón in her debut. She returned seven months later to face Hailey Cowan at UFC Vegas 115, which takes place April 4 at Meta APEX, and has mixed feelings about her first night as a UFC fighter.
While lamenting not winning her first UFC appearance after so much hype and expectation, “Golden Girl” admits to feeling strange about how apathetic she was as she tasted defeat for the first time in six professional MMA fights.
Advertisement
“To be honest, at that moment when my hand wasn’t raised, I wasn’t sad,” Pereira told MMA Fighting. “I didn’t come away feeling like I had a terrible fight or that I didn’t do my job well. To this day, I don’t know if that was good or bad because I was apathetic about my fight for a long time. I didn’t have a bad feeling because, to me, I had done a good job.
“I could have been a little more aggressive, yes, but it’s very easy to say that when you look back on it. When we put together the game plan and the strategy, we went in ready to follow it to the end, and I didn’t want to give Rendon any opportunity to take me down. I defended every takedown. Maybe that was even part of it. I might have been so focused on defending his takedowns that I held back some of my usual aggression, which is what I was missing a little bit.” to even things out.”
Pereira went from a highly-hyped protest to facing extreme criticism from fans in the span of 15 minutes. While some argue that she was too green to be in the UFC as a 5-0 teenager, Pereira said that “there is no better place in the world for an athlete than the UFC.” She is surrounded by fighters who have been in the UFC before, including her boyfriend Carlos Felipe, so watching from afar taught her that “we really have to ignore (the online comments) because if we take everything we read seriously, we will go crazy.”
Although it is easier said than done.
Advertisement
“I was already getting hate even before I was in the UFC, people were talking badly about my comments, so imagine when I came in,” Pereira said. “I was absolutely sure about that. What I do the most now is filter things. Unfortunately, one of my favorite things to do is read comments on any video, but now I avoid it as much as I can. And sometimes it’s not even my post. There have been so many times where I come on a random post and people are talking about me. Guys, I’m not even the topic of this post, why are they talking about me? And then I end up getting mad at myself for reading the comments.
“Nowadays, the mental cleansing I do is really about avoiding this type of content that doesn’t give me anything. And in this camp, after my first fight, I wanted to invest more in my mental work, with therapy and everything. Not for other people’s opinions, but to help me build that mental shield, which could be the key I was missing.”
Pereira decided to fly to Las Vegas a week earlier than originally planned to visit the UFC Performance Institute and make use of the structure available to fighters for free, one that “will only add more and help me continue to progress on this journey within the UFC.” Prior to the trip, Pereira finished her training camp in Rio de Janeiro with visits to several teams to work alongside Ketlen Vieira at Nova Uniao and Melissa Gatto at KO Squad.
“We carefully chose the places that would add to my game in terms of knowledge,” Pereira said. “Sometimes you learn a little position, a different grip that can be effective for your game and change everything. Sometimes you learn a slightly different hand position and that could be the key to winning a fight. We chose where we wanted to go and it was an incredible week. We met a lot of great people and learned a lot.”
Advertisement
Cowan, who is 14 years older than the Brazilian, has more experience in the sport after building a 5-2 record in the LFA and making two trips to the Octagon. His back is against the wall after back-to-back losses to Jamey-Lyn Horth and Nora Cornolle in the UFC, and Pereira is confident he can win in any area.
“This time the story will be different because of a lot of small adjustments we’ve been making throughout camp,” Pereira said. “I have several paths to winning this fight. I like to prepare beforehand, especially for my post-fight interviews. I’m that type of fighter who already thinks, ‘Oh my God, what am I going to say?’ I’m still undecided because there are so many ways this fight can play out and so many ways I can get the win that I’m comfortable with how it’s going to play out.
“I don’t think I’ll be frustrated if I don’t get a knockout or a submission. If it goes to the scorecards, that’s fine too. I’m going in with a very clear mind, knowing that no matter what happens, I’ll be winning rounds and excelling. I know I have multiple paths, so I’m very calm about it.”