Former champion Jamahal Hill certainly isn’t overawed by Alex Pereira as the American seeks to regain the UFC’s light heavyweight championship at next week’s UFC 300 event in Las Vegas.

Hill has been absent from competition since January of last year when he won the then-vacant 205-pound belt in a bout with Pereira’s longtime collaborator Glover Teixeira, vacating the championship several months later after suffering a freak achilles injury reportedly while playing basketball.

Next Saturday night, the 12-1 (1) Hill will seek to do what few have been able to do do before — defeat two-sport world champion Pereira in a fight widely expected to be a stand-up affair, but ahead of the contest Hill isn’t overly-focused on the Brazilian’s world class striking.

“He’s just a man,” Hill, 32, told GiveMeSport. “I don’t do that whole mythical build-up, all that thing, my mind doesn’t work like that. I look at the man, I look at the problems he presents, and I look at the opportunities I have and that’s it. It comes from a simple fact of what I’ve experienced.”

Hill presents issues of his own on the feet. His 12 career wins show seven knockouts, with three of his past four opponents being defeated by KO or TKO. And it is his own capacity to finish fights that he says Pereira should be wary of.

“I’ve seen men, I’ve seen men that I thought were scary, and I thought were terrifying, and then by the time we got in there, they feared me,” he explained. “I didn’t fear them. They feared me. That’s just what it comes down to. Time again, I’ve shown myself that I’m the one to be feared. He don’t scare me? What do I have to be scared of?”