Alex Pereira Offers Clarity on Potential Magomed Ankalaev Matchup

UFC light heavyweight champion Alex Pereira is stamping his authority on the decision for his next opponent and in the process denying #1 contender Magomed Ankalaev his title shot. Months after Ankalaev claimed that the UFC and bossman Dana White have assured him of a shot at UFC gold, Pereira has come out with a bold statement of his own.

“It won’t be Ankalaev.”

This statement comes weeks after the lightweight champion had assured reporters that he would personally make it more difficult for Ankalaev to fight him for the title for perceived insults thrown at him by the contender.

This is in sharp contrast to White earlier asserting to the media at the UFC 307 presser that Ankalaev had not been skipped over and would be next in line if he went in there and defeated Aleksandar Rakic!

Ankalaev had long been trying to fight Pereira for the title but ‘Poatan’ didn’t seem to be too interested in fighting him. His last fight was instead against #7 ranked Khalik Rountree, another striker he eventually put down after a hard-fought battle. In his short UFC career, which has spanned over 10 fights, Pereira has only ever fought strikers.

And to his credit, he’s only ever lost once and that too to one of the greatest middleweights of all time- Israel Adesanya. This, along with the ‘now-mythical’ tale of how a rivalry with Izzy brought him back from the bottom of a bottle of whiskey to the UFC has rendered him into a folk hero from the legends.

Also, knocking out almost every opponent he has faced to date has only helped further his legacy. However, the UFC has been extremely careful with the booking of their newest star.

And even now as they set him up for an eventual fight against UFC heavyweight Jon Jones sometime in the near future, Pereira is yet to fight someone who was half decent on the ground.

Pereira wants to fight Jones and go for that elusive third title. But can he withstand Jones’ ground game? Is his striking enough of a threat to neutralize grapplers? Ankalaev would have been the first to put those theories to the test.

Alas, 2014 has been the year where champions don’t seem to want to fight the #1 contenders.

It’s dodgeball time!

UFC’s booking of its champions in 2024 has been rather moody. While lightweight champion Islam Makhachev and featherweight champion Ilia Topuria have been sent to fight just about anything that stands in their way, the light heavyweight and heavyweight divisions have been allowed longer leashes.

UFC heavyweight champion Jon Jones went on a hiatus for a year after winning the title from Cyril Gane in 2023. In his absence, Tom Aspinall stepped up and kept the division moving by winning the interim title and then defending it even before Jones made it back to the UFC.

Technically, once the interim champion defends the title, he becomes the undisputed champion. But Jones was allowed some leeway courtesy of his history with the promotion. But upon returning he insisted on fighting a 42-year-old Stipe Miocic, who had been out of the sport for 3 years instead.

Even after that, he refused to fight Aspinall, claiming that the Brit needed to fight more champions before facing him, which is 9 kinds of confounding since Jones is the champion, Aspinall is entitled to fight next.

It was only a few days ago that Dana White all but confirmed that fight after months of sidestepping mines from the press on the subject.

And now, it seems he has got to deal with Pereira!