Alex Pereira Wants Ciryl Gane Rematch at Madison Square Garden
Alex Pereira wants a rematch with Ciryl Gane and is targeting Madison Square Garden in November as the night to do it. The former two-division champion told UFC Brasil that the pairing is the fight that makes sense after his heavyweight debut ended in a second-round stoppage.
Gane stopped Pereira at 1:27 of Round 2 on June 14 at UFC Freedom 250, the White House card that served as Pereira’s first appearance at 265 pounds. The Frenchman left that night as a two-time interim heavyweight champion and closed Pereira’s attempt to become the first three-division titleholder in UFC history.
Pereira’s record now sits at 13-4. Gane is 14-2 with one no contest and still holds the interim belt while undisputed champion Tom Aspinall remains out.
Asked whether he still wanted the rematch, Pereira answered without delay.
“For sure,” he said. “I think that’s the fight that makes sense.”
The request is not a sudden change of heart. Pereira vacated the light heavyweight title in February, moved up to chase history, and has spent the months since June pointing back at Gane as the opponent who still gives him a path to a third belt.
He framed that chase as the plan he wants to see through, not a backup idea.
“And man, with everything I do I always go into it thinking it’s going to work out,” Pereira said. “I really want it to work out, I want to win that third belt.”
He did not close the door on a return to 205 pounds. Pereira said he can drop back down if the heavier weight does not feel right, and he refused to treat that option as a step backward.
“I have the option to go back if I want to, if I don’t feel good there,” he said. “I don’t think there’s any shame in going back down.”
That stance is tied to the body of work he has already built inside the promotion. Pereira won the middleweight title from Israel Adesanya at Madison Square Garden in November 2022, then captured vacant light heavyweight gold against Jiri Prochazka at the same venue one year later.
He later reclaimed the 205-pound belt by stopping Magomed Ankalaev in the first round at UFC 320 in October 2025. Those results are why he now argues that the UFC should leave both doors open.
“I think I’ve done a lot of things in the UFC, and I think I deserve to have those options,” Pereira said. “I think I deserve that.”
The date he wants is as specific as the opponent. When the interviewer asked when he would fight again if the choice were his, Pereira named the Garden and named Gane in the same breath.
“Well, I’d come back at Madison Square Garden, me and Ciryl Gane,” he said. “If it were up to me, that’s what I’d choose.”
UFC 334 is scheduled for Nov. 14 at Madison Square Garden and still has no announced headliner. A Pereira-Gane rematch on that card would put the interim title back in front of a New York crowd while the undisputed picture stays frozen.
Aspinall has not fought since Oct. 25, 2025, when his first meeting with Gane at UFC 321 was waved off as a no contest after an eye poke. The champion later had eye surgery, and UFC officials have recently said his long absence is now part of the heavyweight title conversation.
Gane’s cleanest long-term assignment remains a unification fight with Aspinall. That bout is not booked, which is why Pereira’s November request has a practical opening as well as a personal one.
A rematch would also give Pereira another night in the building that already holds two of his championship wins. The Garden has been the stage for the biggest climbs of his UFC run, and he is asking to use it again against the man who halted his heavyweight debut.
Nothing about the pairing is official. Pereira stated a preference, and the UFC has not confirmed the fight, the date, or the belt conditions.
If the promotion keeps Gane on hold for Aspinall, Pereira still has the two routes he described: stay at heavyweight and keep chasing the third belt, or return to light heavyweight without calling that move a retreat. For now, the fight he wants is Ciryl Gane in New York in November.