Alex Pereira says Ciryl Gane landed a number of “illegal shots” which contributed to his defeat at the UFC’s White House event.
Frenchman Gane stopped Pereira in the second round of the interim heavyweight title fight on Sunday to end the Brazilian’s bid to become the UFC’s first three-division champion.
After dropping Pereira with a jab, Gane threw a number of downward elbows and punches as Pereira tried to get back to his feet, with some landing on the back of the head.
The fight was stopped by referee Herb Dean shortly after.
“I was getting up. It became difficult to recover,” Pereira said on his YouTube channel.
“I believe that if it wasn’t for those shots I could have possibly recovered. Maybe not, but they were very hard shots and illegal.
“This guy’s desperate. He landed a punch that he couldn’t even believe, then he wanted to end the fight no matter what.”
In a video on Instagram, Pereira released images of the back of his head, which appeared to show swelling and bruising.
The former middleweight and light-heavyweight champion said he spoke with Dean the day before the bout in Washington DC to raise concerns about Gane’s striking.
“What’s upset me is I warned him beforehand but the guy doesn’t have the guts,” Pereira said.
“I said ‘look, eye poke, groin strikes, those things can happen, but this guy has a long history of it – dirty shots, throwing punches to the back of the head, elbows’,” so I was worried.
In response, Dean defended his officiating., external He said blows to the nape of the neck are illegal, as are strikes in a two-inch column down the back of the head, but hits to the sides of this are allowed.
“The rule we’re talking about is the back of the head, which is confusing,” said Dean.
“It’s different in boxing, and the way we enforce this rule is we focus on the nape of the neck, which is really what the rule should be called.”
Britain’s Tom Aspinall, whose heavyweight title fight with Gane in October was deemed a no contest after Gane poked him in the eye multiple times, said “it looked like there was a lot of illegal elbows going on”.
Aspinall called Gane a “cheat” following their bout, which left him needing surgery on both eyes, but the Frenchman said: “I respect the rules.”
