Alex Pereira’s Gane KO dispute leaves the real Pavlovich risk unresolved

New footage has reopened the argument around Alex Pereira’s second-round knockout loss to Ciryl Gane, just as Pereira prepares for another high-risk heavyweight assignment. MMA Fighting reported that the video captures head coach Plinio Cruz shouting “back of the head” toward referee Herb Dean during the June finish.

The footage establishes the corner’s immediate objection. It does not establish that the result was incorrect, and the available record still lists Pereira’s loss as a second-round knockout. For bettors assessing his announced five-round fight with Sergei Pavlovich at UFC 335 on Dec. 12, the meaningful question is not whether the dispute can be relitigated. It is whether the finish exposed a repeatable vulnerability.

That answer is not in the footage.

The objection does not erase Pereira’s durability question

Pereira enters the Pavlovich fight at 13-4, with two stoppage losses across 13 archived UFC bouts. The Gane defeat was his first loss since Magomed Ankalaev beat him by unanimous decision over five rounds in March 2025, and it followed a first-round knockout of Ankalaev in their rematch.

That sequence matters because Pereira’s recent results do not point cleanly in one direction. He has stopped three of his past four defeated opponents, including Ankalaev in the first round, Jiří Procházka in the second and Khalil Rountree Jr. in the fourth. He has also now been knocked out twice in the available archive.

The new corner video changes the context around the latest stoppage, not the official data attached to it. A bettor cannot safely remove the Gane loss from Pereira’s durability profile, but neither can one conclude from this packet that Gane found a conventional defensive flaw Pavlovich is certain to reproduce. The legality and exact impact of the disputed blows remain unresolved here.