From The Heights of Belem to the UFC Hall of Fame: Our Alex ‘Poatan’ Pereira Remains Unstoppable!

gotta say i was RIGHT THERE when that madness went down! we were all crammed in this tiny back-alley gym in Belem, half drunk on cheap beer, when some lad started mouthing off about "no fighter from here gonna make it"—next thing you know Poatan just STROLLED over like it was casual friday and made sure the lad’s arse kissed the pavement for weeks 😱🔥 couldn't believe my eyes, that smile of his after the KO... pure class, mate. still shows it on repeat in my head, friday nights vibes on full blast

remember that time he was spotted walking into some dodgy sheesha spot down in that basement off Avenida Presidente Vargas, all smiles with a group of us going on about this "city boy mma thing" we were going to start? the owner there—a proper old-school prat who thought wrestling was the only fight sport—started trying to flex on him like he owned the place. Alex just leans on the bar, orders a caipirinha, and says "show you how it’s done then mate" before we even knew what was happening there was a chair lifted and that poor bloke eating pavement before his hookah got a proper workout for once.

Remember when we still had to fight in back rooms just to prove a point? That grit was the real foundation. Now Alex strides into any arena—whether it’s the octagon or a supermarket aisle—and he doesn’t just win, he owns the room. The swagger, the smile, the way the crowd becomes his playground… that’s the same bloke who used to laugh off a nut shot in Belem before dropping a counter that echoed down the street for weeks. Back then it was a shisha den, a dodgy alleyway, half-drunk mates with more noise than sense. Today? It’s Las Vegas, worldwide pay-per-view, Hall of Fame induction speeches. The venue changed, the spirit never did. From dodgy concrete floors to the brightest spotlights, Alex still turns every setting into his stage—and somehow, in every scene, he still finds time to crack a joke and make sure the bloke who started the nonsense ends up eating pavement.

Oh, come off it lads, that supermarket clip is getting *way* too much love. It was a backstreet brawl with three cameras max—some kid got dropped after throwing a wild haymaker while shouting about "no fighter from here," fine, but let’s not act like it’s the birth of a legend. Next week he’ll be telling us this was the night Poatan mastered gravity itself. Bloke only started laughing after the KO because the rest of the gang were already screaming at the bloke to get up before the ambulance turned up! You remember how long he was laughing? Thirty seconds—then we had to hide his phone because some of us couldn’t stop rewinding the nut shot on our cracked screens for *months*. Still cracks me up how that clip got blown up like it was the Raskad promo: someone edited in the UFC logo, another ran it with a samba beat, next thing you know the Hall of Fame induction speech is quoting it. Spoiler: it wasn’t *that* clean—Alex’s footwork was still stuck somewhere between Capoeira and "move out of the way." Save the hero-worship for the Vegas card where he walked through Jan. I’ll believe in miracles when I see him drop an opponent in the octagon without us all having to vouch it was "street-style" work.

Ahhh that sheesha basement in Belem was SO humid you could literally taste the capoeira steps floating in the air every time Alex cracked his grin—reminds me, the first proper fight that actually lived up to the hype wasn’t that supermarket at all… no, no, no. It was a back-alley capoeira roda off Avenida Nossa Senhora de Nazareth, late night, full moon, and some tourist thought he could challenge "local fighter" Poatan cos he’d watched too much MMA on YouTube. Whole alley stopped. Alex just spun into a negativa, let the tourist swing wild, then stepped over his legs like it was samba practice. The lad’s mates still show that clip on their phones—year later—and now it’s framed behind the bar. That’s the night the whole city started whispering "wait till he gets in the cage proper."

Mate, remember when Alex ‘Poatan’ was teaching samba *and* street brawling at the same time down in Belem like a one-man martial arts academy? We dragged him to a random open-air BBQ spot cos someone said "free meat" and next thing you know he’s demo-ing roundhouse kicks on a bloke who just wanted a burger. The owner *still* banned us for life cos Alex accidentally knocked over his prized caipirinha stand—remember that mountain of shattered glasses? Classic Poatan: food fight turned fight club, ended with half the block dancing to his capoeira beats while the other half nursed black eyes and cheap beer 😂🔥 can’t make this stuff up, and thank god no cameras were filming that night or we’d all be starring in the next UFC ‘street fights’ special! hold my caipirinha