Magomed Ankalaev is calling Alex Pereira a liar for several reasons ahead of their rematch this Saturday.
Ankalaev and Pereira battle for the light heavyweight title in the main event of UFC 320, which
takes place at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. The second meeting has a lot more heat than the original, with several things coming between the two fighters.
One of which was a run-in at the UFC Performance Institute, where Pereira says Ankalaev tried to “hide” from him – which the 205-pound champion explains never happened.
“When I heard that that’s what he said, I was perplexed,” Ankalaev told MMA Fighting through a translator. “I was confused. Why would he even say that? If you look at the last fight, I bullied him in the fight. I pressured him. He was running away from me the entire fight. I won the fight. I became champion. So why would I be hiding from him? So when I saw the statement that that’s what he said, that I hid from him, I just wanted to understand from his mouth – why is it that he said that?
“So I found out what times he’s there, like what time he usually comes to the P.I. I went and I had a procedure done, and then I walked out, and there he was with his team, and I asked him, I said, ‘You were looking for me? You said I was hiding. Well, here I am. You found me. So why were you saying that?’ And then he couldn’t really explain himself.
“Then he started doing all sorts of like, ‘I don’t know, the lady said, the girl said, somebody said.’ I didn’t even care to listen to any of that explanation because there I was confronting him right in front of his face, and he had no answer for why he told everybody that I was hiding from him.”
Ankalaev earned his second chance to fight for the title at UFC 313 in March, defeating Pereira via unanimous decision to earn his 12th straight win and extend his unbeaten streak to 13 fights.
On Monday, during an open workout scrum in Las Vegas, Pereira said the reason why Ankalaev is denying what happened that day is proof that Ankalaev is not writing his own tweets on social media.
The light heavyweight champion was asked about his thoughts on Pereira’s comments and clarified how it all works.
“What is it that he’s referring to that doesn’t match?” Ankalaev said.
“I don’t know what he’s referring to because I’m constantly in communication with my manager, Ali [Abdelaziz]. We always talk about things. If somebody’s throwing a challenge out, or somebody says something in my direction, we discuss it, we hash it out, and we figure out what we have to, and then he puts it into a tweet.
“Never has he ever written anything without my consent. We’re constantly in communication. So there’s not one tweet, not one [thing written] that came out that I wasn’t aware of that was done behind my back. We always do stuff together.”
Ankalaev has been calling for the rematch with Pereira ever since their first fight ended, and he wasn’t surprised the UFC went that direction, mostly due to the availability of the division’s top contenders.
While Pereira wants to right the wrong of their first fight, he says that it isn’t personal with Ankalaev, and he has no issues with the current titleholder.
On the other side, it’s the opposite.
“Yeah, it’s personal to me because this is my belt,” Ankalaev explained. “I’m the champion. I’m being hunted. I have to defend my belt, so it is personal to me.
“And also [it’s personal], because of the stuff that he said, things that didn’t happen, that I hid from him, and all of that stuff that hurt me, and I didn’t like that. And so it makes me want to hurt him more for saying stuff that isn’t true.”
While it seemed like Pereira wasn’t at his absolute best on the night of UFC 313, “Poatan” claims he was only at “40 percent” in the bout.
Ankalaev says that he believes Pereira is making excuses, and that’s what makes this rematch so important to him, so that he can prove to his rival and the rest of the world that the result of their first bout wasn’t a fluke.
“I don’t know how prepared he was,” Ankalaev said. “I don’t know why he’s coming up with these excuses or whatever he’s coming up with. Whatever. We gave him another chance; he has another chance. Let’s see 100 percent [Pereira].”
“Let’s see what he can do when he’s 100 percent, and then we’ll do a fight and we’ll show him that this time he’s going to say that he was only [30 percent] ready.”
With still a few days of activities left before both men get locked inside the octagon again, Ankalaev predicts that the rematch is going to look a heck of a lot different than their UFC 313 encounter.
“I think it’s going to be a whole different fight,” Ankalaev explained. “It’s going to be a very ruthless fight. I think both sides are going to be hunting for a knockout in order to make sure to close this chapter and end this chapter of the book.”
