Former UFC light heavyweight champion Magomed Ankalaev will make his return to the Octagon in a main event clash against perennial contender Khalil Rountree Jr. at the upcoming UFC Abu Dhabi card on July 25 from inside Etihad Arena in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.<\/p>\n
This is according to an initial report by Russian MMA news outlet, VestnikMMA<\/a>, which was later corroborated.<\/p>\n Ankalaev, 33, is coming off a massive title fight loss to Alex Pereira at UFC 320 back in Oct. 2025. It took \u201cPoatan\u201d just 80 seconds to stop Ankalaev with strikes and win back his 205-pound title (highlights HERE<\/a>). Ankalaev claims that he fought with broken ribs<\/a> and didn\u2019t train for over a month<\/a> leading into the title fight rematch, but nobody ever puts too much into what a fighter says after he loses. It\u2019ll be up to Ankalaev to prove he\u2019s ready to return to title contention with a main event win over Rountree on home soil.<\/p>\n Rountree, 36, is also coming off a loss at UFC 320 after suffering a knockout defeat at the hands of former UFC light heavyweight champion Jiri Prochazka. The former Ultimate Fighter standout is just 1-2 in his three Octagon appearances, but those losses came against Pereira and the aforementioned Prochazka. Before that, Rountree had won five fights in a row, including three Performance of the Night awards. He\u2019s more than capable of playing spoiler against a striker like Ankalaev, but Rountree will certainly be a sizeable underdog come fight night.<\/p>\n What do you say, Maniacs? Who wins this matchup of light heavyweight contenders?<\/p>\n Stick with Mania for more UFC Abu Dhabi fight card news and coverage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former UFC light heavyweight champion Magomed Ankalaev will make his return to the Octagon in a main event…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":688818,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,40762,785,85,1396,179146],"class_list":["post-688817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-latest-ufc-mma-news","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-ufc-news","tag-ufc-on-paramount"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/688817","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=688817"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/688817\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/688818"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=688817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=688817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=688817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}