This is actually a tough choice. My heart wants to pick Miocic but my brain tells me Pereira.
Pereira rolls with Texeira, so I would be shocked if his grappling was complete shit. If Jones gets tagged hard or pieced up standing, he's certainly going to try to take it to the ground. No one has seen enough of Alex's ground game to know how that plays out.
The ONLY redeeming quality I can see in Miocic is that he is a firefighter. Most firefighters I have known stay in good physical shape because they want to, and not because they have to. They know their conditioning can mean the difference between life and death... either their own, their co-workers, or someone in need.
That being said, staying in physical shape does nothing for the chin, or the ability to take a good shot or sustained abuse. Stipe will be 42 and Jones 37 by the time the octagon door closes behind them.
Now, I can't speak to what it is like fighting at 42, but I can tell you for sure that it was a hell of a lot harder to get up from a solid bodycheck at 42 than it was at 37. People's will to win lasts way longer than their bodies can perform.
I like Miocic, I always have. I want him to win, and in the extremely unlikely event he shocked the world, it would be right up there with Serra beating GSP. Realistically? I think hell will freeze over first.
Pereira has been a beast. Fights often, and I don't think he fears anything or anyone. Doesn't seem to care about trash talk or get caught up in drama. Doesn't seem to give a shit what others think about him either.
If the UFC was hell-bent on making the Jones/Miocic fight happen, they NEVER should have created the interim HW title in the first place. The UFC fucked this entire situation up, all for the sake of marketing one single fight.
If Jones simply unified the titles by beating Aspinall first (at MSG in November), he could fight Alex, or Stipe or even fucking Dana White and there would be no outcry at all. It would be the natural progression of the division and belts.
Hell, if Jones dispatched Aspinall easily and took no damage, the Pereira fight could happen in as little as 3 or 4 months later. If Alex gets another LHW KO finish in the meantime, and it becomes a collision course between two killers that is quite marketable.
I know, I know... a lot of ifs, but damn if that wouldn't make for a way to kick off 2025.