Magomed Ankalaev is calling Alex Pereira a liar for several reasons ahead of their rematch this Saturday.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
One of which was a run-in at the UFC Performance Institute, where Pereira says Ankalaev tried to \u201chide\u201d from him \u2013 which the 205-pound champion explains never happened.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I heard that that\u2019s what he said, I was perplexed,\u201d Ankalaev told MMA Fighting through a translator. \u201cI 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\u2019s what he said, that I hid from him, I just wanted to understand from his mouth \u2013 why is it that he said that?<\/p>\n
\u201cSo I found out what times he\u2019s 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, \u2018You were looking for me? You said I was hiding. Well, here I am. You found me. So why were you saying that?\u2019 And then he couldn\u2019t really explain himself.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen he started doing all sorts of like, \u2018I don\u2019t know, the lady said, the girl said, somebody said.\u2019 I didn\u2019t 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
The light heavyweight champion was asked about his thoughts on Pereira\u2019s comments and clarified how it all works.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat is it that he\u2019s referring to that doesn\u2019t match?\u201d Ankalaev said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know what he\u2019s referring to because I\u2019m constantly in communication with my manager, Ali [Abdelaziz]. We always talk about things. If somebody\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cNever has he ever written anything without my consent. We\u2019re constantly in communication. So there\u2019s not one tweet, not one [thing written] that came out that I wasn\u2019t aware of that was done behind my back. We always do stuff together.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ankalaev has been calling for the rematch with Pereira ever since their first fight ended, and he wasn\u2019t surprised the UFC went that direction, mostly due to the availability of the division\u2019s top contenders.<\/p>\n
While Pereira wants to right the wrong of their first fight, he says that it isn\u2019t personal with Ankalaev, and he has no issues with the current titleholder.<\/p>\n
On the other side, it\u2019s the opposite.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, it\u2019s personal to me because this is my belt,\u201d Ankalaev explained. \u201cI\u2019m the champion. I\u2019m being hunted. I have to defend my belt, so it is personal to me.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd also [it\u2019s personal], because of the stuff that he said, things that didn\u2019t happen, that I hid from him, and all of that stuff that hurt me, and I didn\u2019t like that. And so it makes me want to hurt him more for saying stuff that isn\u2019t true.\u201d<\/p>\n
While it seemed like Pereira wasn\u2019t at his absolute best on the night of UFC 313, \u201cPoatan\u201d claims he was only at \u201c40 percent\u201d in the bout.<\/p>\n
Ankalaev says that he believes Pereira is making excuses, and that\u2019s 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\u2019t a fluke.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know how prepared he was,\u201d Ankalaev said. \u201cI don\u2019t know why he\u2019s coming up with these excuses or whatever he\u2019s coming up with. Whatever. We gave him another chance; he has another chance. Let\u2019s see 100 percent [Pereira].\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cLet\u2019s see what he can do when he\u2019s 100 percent, and then we\u2019ll do a fight and we\u2019ll show him that this time he\u2019s going to say that he was only [30 percent] ready.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s going to be a whole different fight,\u201d Ankalaev explained. \u201cIt\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Magomed Ankalaev is calling Alex Pereira a liar for several reasons ahead of their rematch this Saturday. Ankalaev…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":182627,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,1347,785,85,787,1396,14855],"class_list":{"0":"post-182626","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mma","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-fighting","11":"tag-latest-news","12":"tag-mma","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-ufc","15":"tag-ufc-news","16":"tag-videos"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182626"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182626\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/182627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}