Aline Pereira Signs MMA Deal with Legacy Fighting Alliance

It’s a family affair for Aline Pereira

The 32-year-old Brazilian kickboxer, the younger sister of Alex Pereira, will be making a transition to MMA.

Aline Pereira

Pereira, a former Glory kickboxer, has signed a mixed martial arts deal with Legacy Fighting Alliance (LFA).

Pereira will make her MMA debut on November 18 against Ultimate Fighter veteran Helen Peralta in a women’s flyweight bout.

Pereira brother, the former two-division Glory Kickboxing champion who is now the top contender in the UFC‘s middleweight division. Alex, 35, will challenge old kickboxing rival Israel Adesanya for Adesanya’s middleweight title in the main event of UFC 281 on Nov. 12 in New York.

Aline, like her brother, trains out of former UFC light heavyweight champion Glover Teixeira‘s gym in Connecticut. She is 6-2 in kickboxing, most recently falling to Glory super bantamweight champion Tiffany Van Soest via unanimous decision in January 2021.

Roberto “Satoshi” de Souza to Fight AJ McKee in Bellator vs. Rizin Card on New Year’s Eve

Roberto “Satoshi” de Souza will ring in the New Year in the ring…

The 33-year-old Brazilian mixed martial artist, Rizin’s lightweight champion, will fight in an ambitious Bellator vs. Rizin card on New Year’s Eve.

Roberto "Satoshi" de Souzade Souza will fight Bellator star AJ McKee in the main event of the December 31 card at Japan’s Saitama Super Arena. That will be a nontitle matchup.

In the co-main event, it will be both promotion’s featherweight champions — Bellator’s Patricio “Pitbull” Freire and Rizin’s Kleber Koike Erbst — facing off in a superfight.

Also on the card, former Bellator and current Rizin bantamweight champion Kyoji Horiguchi will face Ultimate Fighter veteran Hiromasa Ougikubo, and former Bellator bantamweight champion Juan Archuleta will meet ROAD FC featherweight champion Soo Chul Kim in a bantamweight bout.

All the fights on the card will take place in a ring, rather than a cage, as is tradition in Japanese MMA. The bouts will be held under Rizin rules and not the Unified Rules of MMA, meaning kicks and knees to the head of grounded opponents will be legal. This card is the last addition of an annual big MMA event in Japan on New Year’s Eve.

De Souza (14-1), a Brazilian-born fighter who lives in Japan, has won five straight and is a Brazilian jiu-jitsu specialist.

Freire (34-5) is the greatest fighter in Bellator history, a three-time Bellator featherweight champion and former Bellator lightweight champion. The Brazilian MMA fighter has won nine of his last 10 fights.

Koike (31-5-1), a 33-year-old Brazilian-born fighter who lives and trains in Japan, has won seven straight and has 27 submission finishes in 31 career wins.