{"id":818162,"date":"2026-07-23T06:14:37","date_gmt":"2026-07-23T06:14:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/818162\/"},"modified":"2026-07-23T06:14:37","modified_gmt":"2026-07-23T06:14:37","slug":"ankalaev-wants-pereira-to-return-to-light-heavyweight-for","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/818162\/","title":{"rendered":"Ankalaev wants Pereira to return to light heavyweight for"},"content":{"rendered":"

Magomed Ankalaev hopes to complete his trilogy with Alex Pereira.<\/p>\n

The former UFC light heavyweight champion returns to the Octagon on Saturday in a main-event bout against Bogdan Guskov in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. He hasn’t fought since dropping the title in a first-round knockout loss to Pereira in their UFC 320 rematch last October.<\/p>\n

Ankalaev said he wants Pereira to return to the light heavyweight division so they can fight again.<\/p>\n

“It’s for him to decide, but if it was up to me, I would love for him to come back down to his division so we can have our rubber match,” Ankalaev told CBS Sports’ Shakiel Mahjouri<\/a> through an interpreter.<\/p>\n

Pereira, the former light heavyweight and middleweight champion, made his heavyweight debut at the UFC White House event in June, suffering a second-round TKO loss to Ciryl Gane in an interim title bout.<\/p>\n

Pereira has said he plans to stay at heavyweight, though his next fight isn’t set yet.<\/p>\n

Ankalaev said he expected Pereira to have a hard time adjusting to being a heavyweight – especially against Gane.<\/p>\n

“I kind of assumed that it was gonna be a tough transition for Alex, especially against somebody like a Ciryl Gane, who is a true heavyweight, who is speedy, who is very technical,” Ankalaev said. “I pretty much envisioned that that was gonna be how the fight was gonna go.”<\/p>\n

Ankalaev beat Pereira by unanimous decision to become the 205-pound champ at UFC 313 in March 2025 before losing the belt in their immediate rematch.<\/p>\n

The 34-year-old Dagestani is looking to get back on track against Guskov after the loss to Pereira ended his 14-fight unbeaten streak. Ankalaev was initially scheduled to face Khalil Rountree Jr. this weekend, but Rountree withdrew last week due to an injury.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Magomed Ankalaev hopes to complete his trilogy with Alex Pereira. The former UFC light heavyweight champion returns to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":818163,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,785,85],"class_list":["post-818162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-mma","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/818162","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=818162"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/818162\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/818163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=818162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=818162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=818162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}