In March, Magomed Ankalaev completed his long journey to the light heavyweight mountaintop, defeating future UFC Hall of Famer Alex Pereira to capture the belt at UFC 313. On Saturday, Ankalaev will have to repeat that feat when he makes the first defense of his title in a rematch with Pereira in the main event of UFC 320.
The build to the rematch has been far more personal than the first go-round, with both sides taking shots on social media and in interviews. Pereira has claimed Ankalaev ducked him at the UFC Performance Institute, rather than coming face-to-face with his rival. Ankalaev has fired back on social media, and around and around the fighters have gone.
Speaking to CBS Sports via an interpreter, Ankalaev placed the blame squarely on Pereira and his camp for the bad blood entering Saturday’s clash, saying, “The whole aggression was started by the other side, Alex started it.”
What Ankalaev was more interested in addressing was Pereira’s recent claims to CBS Sports’ Brian Campbell that the Brazilian entered the first fight at just “40%” of what he’s capable of being due to various issues, resulting in a less dangerous version of his trademark striking.
“If he’s going to talk about being 40% there or 40% ready, I can say I was only 20%,” Ankalaev said. “Everybody knows when the last fight was. It was the holy month of Ramadan, so I wasn’t able to prepare the way I needed to prepare either. So, I don’t think he should even mention the 40% because everybody knows that I had a much harder camp than he did and a harder time preparing.”
UFC 320: Alex Pereira gets his chance at redemption after rare humbling loss against Magomed Ankalaev
Brian Campbell
During Ramadan, Muslims fast from food and drink from dawn to sunset for a month. Those fasting rules present unique challenges for high-level athletes who follow regimented schedules the rest of the year for exercise and the required food and drink intake to achieve maximum fitness and performance.
The first fight with Pereira came slightly over a week into Ramadan, which Ankalaev believes impacted his performance, even as he won a unanimous decision by scores of 49-46, 48-47 and 48-47.
Being able to train and compete without the restrictions of Ramadan this time around, Ankalaev believes he’ll be a sharper, better version of himself.
“I think I can surprise him with my striking this time around, now that I’ve had more time to prepare and a full camp,” Ankalaev said. “I can also surprise him and give him trouble with my wrestling. This time around, I had a good preparation and a good time getting ready for this fight. You’re going to see this is a whole different fight from the first one.”
Compared to expectations ahead of their UFC 313 clash, Pereira vs. Ankalaev looked like something out of Bizarro World.
Ankalaev outstruck the multi-time kickboxing champion, landing 30 more total strikes, while Pereira stuffed all 12 of the superior grappler’s takedown attempts. While Ankalaev’s takedowns weren’t working, his grappling did allow him to smother Pereira in the clinch and dictate the range at which the fight was contested.
Asked why he was unable to be more successful with his takedowns in the March bout, Ankalaev again pointed to his camp and preparation as the key factor in the fight while saying he will be able to take Pereira down any time he wishes in the rematch.
“The only thing that’s needed in this fight to take him down is my desire to do so,” Ankalaev said. “I just need to want to take him down, and that’s what I’ll do. In the first fight, I wasn’t as well prepared as I wanted to be because of the timing and the camp. Now, you’ll see it’s all up to me. The only thing I need to do to take him down is just wish for it and do it whenever I feel like it. I will be fully in control of the fight; you will see it.”
Ankalaev is riding a 13-fight unbeaten streak, winning 12 and battling Jan BÅ‚achowicz to a dull draw in a 2022 bout for the then-vacant light heavyweight championship. It was a long path for Ankalaev, who believed champions didn’t want to give him opportunities to fight for the belt as he piled up victories for more than half a decade.
Knowing how hard it was to get to the mountaintop, Ankalaev said that his approach to being champion is to say yes to whoever the UFC puts in front of him, even if it means granting Pereira an immediate rematch.
“It wasn’t a plan that we had to immediately rematch him,” Ankalaev said. “I didn’t think about rematching right away. This is something I told the UFC even before I was champion, ‘When I become a champion, I’m not going to pick my opponents, I don’t need you to pick opponents for me. I will fight whoever is deserving.’
“When I was a contender, when I wasn’t champion yet, there were champions who did not want to give me a fight and trying to avoid me. It was like, no matter how many times I tried, the UFC wasn’t giving me a chance to fight for the belt. So, I said to myself and the UFC that when I’m champion, whoever is the next in line and most deserving, that’s who I want to fight.”
Some fighters are making their case to be the next fighter up for the winner of Saturday night’s main event.
This past Saturday, Carlos Ulberg scored a first-round knockout of Dominick Reyes in a UFC Fight Night main event. And on the UFC 320 main card, former light heavyweight champ Jiri Prochazka will battle former title challenger Khalil Rountree.
Ulberg is ranked No. 3 in the UFC’s official light heavyweight rankings while Prochazka is No. 2, and Rountree sits at No. 4. It seems clear that the winner of Ankalaev vs. Pereira will have some clear deserving challenges come Sunday morning. Ankalaev seems more interested in Ulberg as someone who had not lost to Pereira during the Brazilian’s reign as champion, as is the case with Prochazka and Rountree.
“Obviously, I’m looking at the division and the new guys,” Ankalaev said. “There are some guys who already have losses to the former champion, so I’m very interested in seeing the new guys and whoever is next and deserving. The UFC, whoever they want to give me, it seems as though some guys are going well and haven’t lost in a while, I think Ulberg hasn’t lost in a good amount of time, but we’ll see.
“In the past, if the UFC needed them to stall or get a loss, usually they would put a contender against me. Whenever somebody needed to be stopped, they would give them a fight against me, and all of a sudden, those guys get stopped.”
Before looking ahead to the next challenger, however, Ankalaev knows Saturday will be a dangerous fight against an opponent who will be looking to go for broke in an attempt to regain the belt.
“I think it’s going to be a firefight because he’s going to be going for broke; he’s got nothing to lose,” Ankalaev said. “He’s going to try and do whatever he can to win and I’m going to do whatever I can to stop him early. I think it’s going to be an exciting fight, a ruthless fight, and it’s going to be very, very different from the fight we saw before. It’s going to be something everyone is going to want to tune in for.”