Magomed Ankalaev is ready for brighter days ahead after one of the darkest times of his career.<\/p>\n
The former UFC light heavyweight champion makes his first walk to the octagon in 2026 when he faces short-notice replacement opponent Bogdan Guskov in the headliner of Saturday\u2019s UFC Abu Dhabi event. It will serve as Ankalaev\u2019s first fight since losing the title to Alex Pereira via an 80-second knockout at UFC 320 this past August in their rematch.<\/p>\n
Ahead of his return, Ankalaev reflects on the loss to \u201cPoatan.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt must have been the worst day of my life, I could say,\u201d Ankalaev told MMA Fighting 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think what people will see this time around is a whole different fighter.\u201d<\/p>\n
The loss for Ankalaev was just the second of his career, and snapped an incredible 14-fight unbeaten streak, which included a championship win over Pereira at UFC 313 in March 2025.<\/p>\n
Ankalev allowed himself to feel sorry about the Pereira result for a few weeks, but then knew he needed to get back on the horse in hopes of getting that winning feel back.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt didn\u2019t take too long,\u201d Ankalaev said. \u201cIt must have been about a month that I was down on myself, kind of, and I couldn\u2019t get myself to go back to the gym and stuff like that. But 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. \u2026<\/p>\n
\u201cIt definitely was the right time for me to get that loss. As you remember, my first loss in the UFC was also a very terrible, kind of underprepared sort of loss [against Paul Craig] and I came back and I was dominant for such a long time. So I think we\u2019re going to see this again. I needed that loss to bring me back down and then to start moving my way back up.\u201d<\/p>\n
Guskov steps in for the injured Khalil Rountree Jr. after being originally scheduled to face Jan Blachowicz in a rematch at UFC Belgrade a week later. Guskov fought the former champ to a majority draw at UFC 323 this past December, and enters his first UFC headliner on a five-fight unbeaten streak.<\/p>\n
Ankalaev says there were multiple names thrown in his direction\u2014including a heavyweight\u2014but none of them came to fruition, so he\u2019s grateful Guskov took the opportunity to step up and face him.<\/p>\n
\u201cAbout Bogdan, what can I say? He\u2019s a great dude,\u201d Ankalaev said. \u201cHe\u2019s a great dude. I mean, he could have said no as well, and I would have been left without a fight.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo he saved the fight for me, so I\u2019m very thankful, and I think that he\u2019s a great dude for doing it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Magomed Ankalaev is ready for brighter days ahead after one of the darkest times of his career. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":780018,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[829,99,6493,10080,6879],"class_list":["post-780017","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-latest-news","tag-sports","tag-ufc","tag-ufc-news","tag-videos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/780017","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=780017"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/780017\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/780018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=780017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=780017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=780017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}