It's not clear what you want.

• utf8::downgrade switches from bytes internally encoded as UTF-8 to just bytes.

  $ perl -MDevel::Peek -e'utf8::upgrade $x="\200\201"; Dump $x; utf8::do
  +wngrade $x; Dump $x'
    PV = 0x81623f0 [UTF8 "\x{80}\x{81}"]
    PV = 0x81623f0 "\200\201"\0
  [download]

• utf8::encode will re-encode the data that has been decoded from UTF-8.

  
  $ perl -MDevel::Peek -e'utf8::decode $x="\x{2660}"; Dump $x; utf8::enc
  +ode $x; Dump $x'
    PV = 0x81651c0 [UTF8 "\x{2660}"]
    PV = 0x81651c0 "\342\231\240"\0
  [download]

• If it's truly an incorrectly set flag, there's also Encode::_utf8_off. It should only be used if the above two don't work.

  $ perl -MDevel::Peek -MEncode=_utf8_on,_utf8_off -e'_utf8_on( $x="\200
  +\201" ); Dump $x; _utf8_off $x; Dump $x'
    PV = 0x81651e8 [UTF8 "\x{1}@"]
    PV = 0x81651e8 "\200\201"\0
  [download]

References:
utf8 (You don't need to load the module to use its subs.)
Encode

Update: Added code.

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