Alex Pereira tends to handle his business inside the cage, rather than settling the score with trash talk, but it was nearly impossible for the UFC light heavyweight champion to ignore some recent comments made about him.

Ever since he knocked out Jamahal Hill in just over three minutes in the UFC 300 main event, Pereira has heard chirping from his past opponent and that hasn’t slowed down much lately. Just seconds after Pereira demolished Khalil Rountree Jr. at UFC 307, Hill reacted by yawning at the performance and later added that he was “not impressed” by the Brazilian’s latest win.

From the sound of things, Pereira is getting bored with the constant verbal jabs coming from Hill, who hasn’t fought since he got finished back in April.

“I’m going to be real honest with you, if that performance with Khalil was shit, where does Jamahal rank — the performance I had against him?” Pereira told Uncrowned. “If that fight was crap, so imagine the fight [against Jamahal].

“How can he say that? I’m going to be honest, I’m not going to further talk about Jamahal. I’m on a different level.”

While it’s pretty obvious that Hill still has some work to do before he could potentially call for a rematch, Pereira plans to stay busy as he looks ahead at a new year in 2025.

As champion, Pereira doesn’t feel like he has to call his shot regarding what’s next and that’s the way he likes it.

“I don’t have nobody in my mind,” Pereira said. “The organization came with Khalil last time and it was a surprise for me, too. I don’t really choose opponents.”

Pereira might not want to name anybody but all signs are pointing towards an eventual showdown against Magomed Ankalaev — if the Russian can get through Aleksandar Rakic next week at UFC 308.

Ankalaev has been very vocal about his desire to dethrone Pereira, especially after he effectively got passed over for the title shot that went to Rountree.

With his fight just days away, Ankalaev’s manager Ali Abdelaziz previously told MMA Fighting that as long as he takes care of business at UFC 308, then a fight against Pereira would be next.

For his part, Pereira isn’t in the business of turning down fights, although he’s getting a little fed up hearing from Ankalaev and his team so that might change his mind on how to approache these next negotiations.

“Some people say Ankalaev [is next] but I’m going to be honest with you, him and his manager have been talking a lot of crap saying that I don’t want to fight, this and that,” Pereira said. “But the reality is the organization doesn’t want him to fight because he’s boring. People don’t like to watch him fight. He’s not a guy that sells pay-per-views.

“Honestly, that’s disrespectful that they’re trying to put it on me. Because it’s not up to me, it’s up to the organization. The organization doesn’t want to make the fight. But now because they keep saying that, keep disrespecting, maybe I’ll make it a little bit even harder for them to fight [me].”

Obviously no matter what, Pereira has plenty of options available to him, especially after he stepped up and headlined three separate pay-per-view cards for the UFC in 2024.

Pereira admitted after his win over Rountree in October that he was dealing with a multitude of issues including some health problems that nearly made him pull out of the fight.

With his body needing some rest and putting together a very busy schedule in 2024, Pereira is ready for a little break now, right?

“Ideally, I would fight around June, it would be ideal, but maybe I’d like to fight around March even,” Pereira said. “But honestly I would fight in December right now. But the problem is these two fights [at UFC 303 and UFC 308] happen [so close together] and we had a lot of other appearances, a lot of trips, a lot of business to do.

“We had to push them after these two fights, it was scheduled before. The guys who organized it understood, but we have some obligations to do. I feel around March is a good date [to fight again].”