{"id":820792,"date":"2026-07-24T12:04:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-24T12:04:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/820792\/"},"modified":"2026-07-24T12:04:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T12:04:09","slug":"magomed-ankalaev-losing-ufc-title-was-worst-day-of-my-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/820792\/","title":{"rendered":"Magomed Ankalaev: Losing UFC title was \u2018worst day of my life\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">Magomed Ankalaev is opening up on how difficult it was to lose his light heavyweight title to Alex Pereira.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">Ankalaev took the belt off Pereira in March of 2025, winning a grueling five round war against \u201cPoatan.\u201d Seven months later, the two fought again, and this time <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mmamania.com\/ufc-320-ankalaev-vs-pereira-rematch-start-time-full-results-espn-mma\/393719\/ufc-320-results-sooo-about-last-night-ankalaev-vs-pereira-2\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Pereira steamrolled Ankalaev,<\/a> TKOing him in just over a minute.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">\u201cIn our last fight, when we lost the belt, we made an emotional decision,\u201d Sukhrab said. \u201cWe didn\u2019t want to let the promotion down, so we believed we could fight despite the injuries. But things didn\u2019t go according to plan.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">\u201cWe won\u2019t rush things any more. We\u2019ll do everything we can to make sure he goes into every fight 100% healthy and in peak condition. We\u2019ll try to do everything the right way.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">Ankalaev hasn\u2019t spoken publicly about any injuries, but he did discuss the mental effect losing his belt had on him <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mmafighting.com\/ufc\/500515\/magomed-anakalev-alex-pereira-title-loss-must-have-been-the-worst-day-of-my-life\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">with MMA Fighting.<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">\u201cIt must have been the worst day of my life,\u201d Ankalaev said via a Russian translator. \u201cI lost the fight, I lost the belt, and it was really hard for me to get back here. But the time has been taken, the work\u2019s been down, and I\u2019m back a different person. I think what people will see this time around is a whole different fighter.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">\u201cIt must have been about a month that I was down on myself and I couldn\u2019t get myself to go back to the gym and stuff like that,\u201d he added. \u201cBut then I got myself together and I got back into the gym, and I think I\u2019m in the best shape that I\u2019ve been, ever. The best shape of my life.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Magomed Ankalaev is opening up on how difficult it was to lose his light heavyweight title to Alex&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":820793,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,785,85,1396],"class_list":["post-820792","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-ufc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/820792","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=820792"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/820792\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/820793"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=820792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=820792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=820792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}