Volkanovski backs Pereira, says Gane's illegal strikes made 'direct contact on the brain'

Alexander Volkanovski has publicly backed Alex Pereira’s complaints about Ciryl Gane’s finishing assault at UFC White House, arguing that repeated illegal strikes to the back of the head made “direct contact on the brain” and that referee Herb Dean should have intervened.

Pereira was stopped by Gane in the second round of their interim heavyweight title fight, but has since argued the finish was tainted by blows landing in an illegal area. Reviewing the co-main event on his YouTube channel, Volkanovski offered a detailed breakdown that largely supported Pereira’s position.

“Gane did great, fought great,” Volkanovski said. “Was he getting the finish anyway? Probably, but was there back of the head shots? Yes, there was. Could there be a different outcome if you hurt Pereira — because he was obviously doing the right stuff to recover, so he’s on his way to recover until there was a lot of other shots… you get the direct contact on the brain like that, so that’s going to be hard to recover from.”

Volkanovski was careful not to diminish Gane’s performance overall, but said the volume of illegal strikes crossed a line that demanded a referee’s response. “If he does one or two, do you disqualify a guy for that, no, because he’s going for the finish, that’s going to happen,” he said. “But when there’s more than that, something should have been said by the ref. We need to have that discussion.”

The sequence in question came after Gane landed a hard jab in the second round that sent Pereira diving for a leg in an attempt to recover. As Gane continued throwing heavy punches, several appeared to land on the back of Pereira’s head, yet Dean gave no indication the action should be paused.

Volkanovski said he was surprised Dean did not step in during what he described as a prolonged illegal sequence. “I was watching and being like, ‘Far out, that’s a lot of back-of-the-head shots,’” he said. “The ref, I think he should have been pulling him up as he’s doing it. I’m trying to be really nice about this because I don’t want to throw shade on people, but there was a lot of them. A lot of them.”

The former two-division UFC champion framed his comments as a broader conversation about officiating standards rather than a direct attack on Gane, but made clear he felt the situation warranted scrutiny. “If Pereira’s asking for people to speak about it, here I am,” Volkanovski said. “I’m not taking away from Gane, but that instance, we need to have conversations about that because that was pretty bad.”