Preview: UFC 324 Prelims

Flyweights

Charles Johnson (18-7, 7-5 UFC) vs. Alex Perez (25-10, 7-6 UFC)

BETTING ODDS: Johnson (-205), Perez (+170)

Johnson looks to keep building some momentum in this assignment. One of the better flyweights available ahead of his UFC debut in 2022, Johnson had some questions as to how he would fare at the UFC level. A former track athlete, Johnson treated his fights as marathons and not sprints, often fighting at a slow pace and doing his best work in the championship rounds. That was all well and good given five rounds with which to work against worse athletes, but it can result in a frustrating lack of success in shorter and tougher bouts. Indeed, that was the book on Johnson for the first few years of his UFC career. Wrestlers were particularly effective at stalling him out, but Johnson had a lot of performances where he just never picked up the pace and coasted to a loss. “InnerG” still found his slot in the division, staying active and leaning on his toughness and athleticism to settle into a gatekeeper role, and it does seem like he has turned a corner in the last year and change, starting with a July 2024 knockout of Joshua Van that has clearly aged well. Johnson picked up the pace in a subsequent win over Su Mudaerji, and a loss to Ramazan Temirov does seem to have quickly been forgotten. Temirov subsequently failing a drug test has given Johnson some cover, and he himself rebounded with another knockout win over top prospect Lone’er Kavanagh—another result that figures to age well in the coming years. With Van now flyweight champion, Johnson could launch himself into something interesting with a win over a former title challenger in Perez, who’s looking to recapture some much-needed momentum.

Perez was a workhorse for the UFC in his first few years with the promotion, bouncing between flyweight and bantamweight while racking up wins as an aggressive wrestler and pressure fighter. That eventually earned him a shot at then-flyweight champion Deiveson Figueiredo in 2020, at which point Perez’s career essentially fell apart. Figueiredo tapped him in under two minutes, and constant injuries limited Perez to just one fight in the next three and a half years. Perez briefly made up for lost time in 2024, fighting three times in three and a half months. However, the last of those appearances ended with another knee injury, taking Perez out of action until the end of 2025. His most recent outing against Asu Almabayev in November served as a microcosm for how much things have been going wrong for Perez. He was putting forth an excellent performance until he suddenly went off the rails, as Almabayev hopped on a surprise guillotine choke to score a comeback win in the third round. This figures to be Perez’s fight to lose, with the main concern being that he just might lose it. Perez figures to be able to outwrestle and control Johnson for a lot of this encounter. With that said, Perez tends to fade and have things go sideways, while Johnson is clearly a fighter who only becomes more dangerous over time. The lean is that Perez can embrace the grind enough to get this over the finish line, but there’s going to be the constant worry that things can go off the rails at any moment. The pick is Perez via decision.

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