Las Vegas — Newly crowned UFC light heavyweight champion Magomed Ankalaev was in high spirits following Saturday’s UFC 313, having reached the summit of the 205lb mountain, dethroning Alex Pereira in the process.
“It’s a lot of joy to feel this,” Ankalaev (20-1-1, 1NC) told media outlets including Cageside Press following the event, speaking via translator. “I’m really happy that I was able to bring this joy and bring this happiness to first of all my team, of course, and then of course my family, the close people, everybody who rooted for me and was worried about this fight.”
Scoring in the fight was a question mark after 25 minutes. Rounds one and three in particular were close. Pereira appeared to have done enough to win round five. All three judges sided with Ankalaev in the end.
“I was confident,” Ankalaev said, asked about how he felt as the fight went to the judges. “I kept on moving forward, I kept on pressuring him, and he kept on running away from me. For twenty minutes, this guy was running away from me. Then I heard at the end of the fight he was saying that he wasn’t sure why the victory was given to me.”
That had Ankalaev incredulous. “Who’s supposed to be given the victory? I’ve been pressuring him the entire time, he was running twenty minutes and then he’s wondering who’s supposed to get the victory? Listen I’m happy for a rematch if he wants a rematch, but then maybe in the rematch he could fight for real not just run away the entire time.”
As to where his first title defense might come, rematch or not, “it doesn’t really matter to me to be honest, but if it was going to be Abu Dhabi, it would be excellent,” Ankalaev told Cageside Press.
Since a disappointing fight with Jan Blachowicz for the then-vacant light heavyweight title in 2022 that ended in a draw, Magomed Ankalaev has been working to get back to this point. Having finally claimed his first UFC title, that hard work isn’t going to fall off, either. And it sounds like the new champ is willing to take on all comers.
“It’s a wonderful, great feeling, it’s a happy feeling but now I’m going to be working even harder because now I’m hunted man in the division. Everybody’s going to be hunting after my belt,” noted Ankalaev. “So in order to hold it for a long time I’m going to have to be working harder, working more intensely, and the doors for the challengers are going to be open the entire time.”
Watch the full UFC 313 post-fight press conference with Magomed Ankalaev above.
