Magomed Ankalaev Predicts ‘Easy’ Win Against Alex Pereira: “He Won’t Touch Me at All”

Despite the monstrous power and his intimidating aura Alex Pereira ain’t touching Magomed Ankalaev! Atleast that’s what the Russian says.

The light heavyweight recently dropped a bold prediction, vowing to beat the champion without breaking a sweat. Speaking to Aslanbek Badaev in his studio, Ankalaev exuded swagger and machismo when he remarked that he would be able to stand up toe to toe with the former Glory kickboxing champion and even prove that he is better than him.

” The most he can do is hit me with a low kick. I think he won’t touch me with his hands. I’m so confident in myself that I can even beat him standing up. “

Vowing a violent resolution to their encounter, Ankalaev further added:

I can guarantee this, I can fight him standing up until the end if necessary. But I want to beat him up, I just want to attack him, just show him that I’m better than him.”

Ankalaev has been trying to get Poatan’s attention for quite some time now despite the Brazilian calling the match up a boring fight. But the Russian contender wants the UFC light heavyweight gold so bad that he has repeatedly tried to convince everyone that he won’t be shooting from the get go.

Instead- and yes, he means it- Ankalaev want to stand in and trade hands with the man literally nicknamed ‘Stone Hands’.

Meanwhile, the Brazilian is looking to return to action in December this year and has already reacted to Magomed’s KO claim.

Poatan is Pikachu waiting to be Raichu

Following Pereira’s KO victory over Jiri Prochazka, Ankalaev had issued a callout. And guess what, the Brazilian is not shying away from it either.

Despite having fought twice already this year, Pereira has no issues defending his title once again against the Russian.

Reacting to Ankalaev’s claims, ‘Poatan‘ posted a video on Instagram and called him out for trying to self promote by belittling the champion.

“You guys saw, a lot of people trying to self-promote. Trying to belittle me, saying they will knock me out, finish me… but I’m training, evolving… I just started evolving now, that’s the difference.

It’s actually scary that when Pereira came into the UFC he was taking people out with just his kickboxing. But now that he’s admitting to evolving and including other disciplines into his work, the air has suddenly gotten a lot colder.

[I was] able to go toe to toe with just kickboxing. Now I’m evolving, so each fight it’s getting harder for them.”

In fact, evolution is a big part of Pereira’s game and ever since he started his UFC journey. He was recently seen training Judo with Olympic god medalist Kayla Harrison.

It’s a bit like the Francis Ngannou situation. He was knocking people out with sheer power till Stipe Miocic put a stop to the massacre. Then the Cameroonian fighter went back to camp, training to wrestle and just destroyed Miocic in their rematch and at the time of leaving the company, Ngannou was still getting better.

Now, one can argue that Pereira’s ceiling is a bit higher than Ngannou. And that should ring the alarm bells for his opponents.