Magomed Ankalaev doesn’t care about Alex Pereira. He cares that Pereira holds the light heavyweight title that he is fighting for at UFC 313 next week, but other than that, the Brazilian doesn’t matter to him.
Ankalaev has long chased after the champion for his title shot, and Pereira has evidently avoided fighting him, presumably due to his grappling prowess.
This is why the consensus dictates that the Brazilian might take this title defense more personally than the three he had last year.
However, the challenger has boldly claimed he’s training as if the fate of the world depends on it and doesn’t care about Pereira’s sentiments ahead of the fight.
Entering his second title charge at 205 lbs in the Octagon, Ankalaev said, “I don’t care the way this affects him (Alex Pereira),”
Further elaborating on his mindset, the Dagestani grappler told The Mac Life– “I don’t care if he takes it close to heart or not. What I know is we’re looking at this fight as if it’s the last fight ever.”
“And we’re going to do whatever we can to make sure that we get this opportunity [to win the belt]. We were supposed to get this opportunity a long time ago and he was the one withholding this chance from us for a long time.”, Ankalaev explained, detailing the precious time he had lost due to the champion’s unwillingness to fight him.
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Taking a step further, as if he were on his way to exact vengeance for the time lost, Ankalaev has also often brutally predicted a host of devastating routes to victory for him against the Sao Paulo star.
“You just signed your death certificate,” Ankalaev tweeted to Pereira. “I’m gonna punish you for ducking me. And I’m gonna make you look like a guy work (sic) in a tyre shop not [a] professional fighter.”
So, the question is if Pereira is ready for the upcoming storm.
Pereira assures critics he’s training for UFC 313
Infamously taking a round-trip to Australia earlier this month, Pereira only returned to training last week to boot. While drilling striking sessions with Dillon Danis in Connecticut, Cormier warned him to focus his regime on preparing for Ankalaev.
“This dude (Alex Pereira) was seen in Australia last week still. And he was shaking the hand of Drake,” Cormier said on an episode of Good Guy/Bad Guy. “As Drake went on stage for his concert… you kinda don’t want Drake to bet on you.”, the former UFC double champ said, worried about the curse that seems to follow any athlete the rapper supports.
However, reassuring Cormier that he was ready, Pereira revealed he’s travelled close to fight time, time and time again in the past.
“I’ve been in this situation before,” Pereira told Bloody Elbow. “It’s actually been worse before when I was in Australia and had signed up to fight. And didn’t even know I was going to fight. But this time, it was all very planned out.”, he added.
“I knew what I wanted to do. I took basically my whole team down there. There were eight people from Australia with me. So I knew exactly what we were doing, and we planned it all.”, Pereira explained.
Pereira fans can only hope he is telling the truth. Either way, we will find out on March 8.
