Pereira faults Adesanya for mocking son: 'I wouldn't do the same'

Alex Pereira doesn't think Israel Adesanya's postfight celebration directed at Pereira's son was appropriate.

After Adesanya knocked out Pereira at UFC 287 to regain the middleweight title, he walked over toward Pereira's 12-year-old son - who was cageside at Kaseya Center in Miami - and pointed at him before flopping to the ground. The boy, five years old at the time, did the same thing after Pereira knocked out Adesanya in a 2017 kickboxing match in Brazil.

"Honestly, I wouldn't do the same," Pereira said earlier this week in Portuguese in a video on his YouTube channel, according to MMA Fighting's Guilherme Cruz. "I can play with (Adesanya) like I've always played. I've teased him, but I don't know; he's another child."

Pereira said his son thought it was "funny" to mock Adesanya. But he stopped the child from doing it again after he finished Adesanya to win the UFC middleweight title at UFC 281 last November.

"I told him, 'No, stop, don't do it. Stay here, don't do anything,'" Pereira said. "I'm a conscious guy about everything I'm saying here, and I wouldn't do it."

Pereira, 35, was attempting to record his first successful title defense this past weekend but dropped a second-round knockout to his longtime rival. It was his first loss in the UFC.