Do we like them?

Do we like Alex Pereira?

Our score: 5 out of 10. Real charity and nothing harmful in his own words, set against serious allegations he denies and no court has decided.

Pereira left school at 12 to work in a tyre shop, and was drinking heavily by his mid-teens. After plenty of street fights he walked into a kickboxing gym at 21. He won all 25 of his amateur bouts by knockout, stopped drinking and says he hasn't touched a drop since. Of that time he said, “I was an alcoholic, full-blown alcoholic.”

From there he climbed through Glory kickboxing, taking the middleweight title in October 2017, then on to the UFC. He went on to hold UFC titles at middleweight and light heavyweight. It is a proper rags-to-belts story, and it explains why fans in Brazil and beyond are so fond of him.

Now the hard part. Court filings and depositions reviewed by CBC News, as reported by Complex, include allegations from a former partner of coercive sexual encounters, stalking and being restrained. She filed a domestic violence case in Miami in July 2025. Pereira denied it in a deposition, saying “The door was open. She could have left whenever she wanted.” Separately, a TikTok user accused him in 2024 of rape after a UFC event, and he has described that encounter as consensual. No court has ruled on either, and we found no outcome reported.

On the harm test, we found nothing. Searches turned up no remarks from him about trans or LGBTQ+ people, migrants, vaccines or the climate, and no record of him platforming people who push that stuff. That is absence of evidence rather than a big public record of good views, so we say pass, with the gaps noted. The allegations above are a separate question, handled under the good-person test.

His latest stoush was a loss to Ciryl Gane at the White House on 14 June, where he says illegal strikes hit the back of his head. He called the referee “a coward” and said he was afraid to fight again. The referee defended the stoppage, and the result stands. It is a sore loser moment, but it is a fight-sport grievance, not a harmful one.

The good stuff is real. In 2024 he founded Instituto Poatan in São Paulo, a nonprofit offering free tutoring, English, computer classes and jiu-jitsu to underprivileged kids. More than 500 young people have signed up. The UFC named him its 2026 Forrest Griffin Community Award recipient for it.