Jamahal Hill is not content to let sleeping dogs lie.
Earlier this year in the UFC 300 main event, former champion Hill failed in his bid to regain the UFC’s light heavyweight championship when he was knocked out just past the three-minute mark of the first round by reigning 205-pound kingpin Alex Pereira. Ever since, the 33-year-old American has made clear that he intends to forge a path back to the champion — a journey which will culminate in a high profile showdown with another former champion, Jiri Prochazka, at January’s UFC 311 event in Inglewood, California.
But judging by some footage which has filtered out in recent days from the UFC’s Performance Institute in Las Vegas, the two rivals came close to an unofficial rematch in the training room.
Check out the footage below.
Another angle of the altercation between Jamahal Hill and Alex Pereira 😳
🎥 IG / bigzay1__ #AlexPereira #UFC #MMA pic.twitter.com/NHFxJUtCjr
— fightclips22 (@fightclips22) December 5, 2024
Jamahal Hill just approached Alex Pereira at the gym and said “we’re not on Twitter now”
Alex grabbed a pair of gloves and threw them at Jamahal and said “Don’t talk back to your father!”
Of course Hill pussed out 🤷♂️ pic.twitter.com/o248M2AJNI
— ricky~dooby (@rick_doobs) December 5, 2024
Hill would later address the confrontation on his official YouTube channel.
“I was at the P.I. earlier and Alex was there,” Hill said, as noted by MMA Fighting. “I had just finished working out, he was working out, and I just went to go up and have a conversation. Ask him, so we don’t have to talk about it across Twitter, because I’m right here.
“Initially, when I went up to him, it was smooth. ‘Don’t run to heavyweight. I’m going to go ahead and handle business, and then we need to run this back. We need to run it back.’ And somewhere during the exchange, he said something to his translator, and his translator said, ‘You’re still asleep. You just woke up,’ and shit. I’m wide awake now! You can get put to sleep, for real!
“Then it went to a whole, fake-ass, ‘Come get the gloves and go in the cage,’ which I replied, ‘What the f*ck we need gloves for? We’re not getting paid right now.’ I get paid to put on gloves and fight. When I’m out in a situation like that, we could throw hands right now. I’m not fixing to wait, take time, put no gloves on, none of that shit. We could just throw hands right now.
“And his response was just to stand there, so it’s like, f*ck it.
“We’re going to get paid,” Hill added. “I’m not going to ruin my bag, my bread. Because here’s the thing, if I’d have just reached over and hit him there and we started fighting right there, I could possibly lose out on a fight my next fight and any opportunities I have left. I’ve got restrictions now at the P.I. and other things like that. So, we get paid. We made a lot of money the first time we fought. So why would I not make a lot of money when I knock his ass out the next time?”
“At the end of the day, we’re both just fierce and ferocious competitors, and we’ve both got families that we’re trying to provide for. So any talk that’s done right there, it’s not going to be looked at the same because we’re in the same job.”
