Why isn’t Alex Pereira defending his UFC light heavyweight title against Magomed Ankalaev?
That’s a question I asked myself this past weekend when the epic UFC 308 main card was announced, and the No. 1 contender for the 205-pound title was popped into a fight with No. 5 Aleksandr Rakic.
It’s a bit of matchmaking that former two-division champion and current UFC analyst Daniel Cormier initially questioned. On a recent episode of Good Guy, Bad Guy with Chael Sonnen, Cormier was asked why Pereira isn’t fighting Ankalaev.
“Can I be honest with you?” Cormier asked rhetorically. “I think this is, and I don’t know why Pereira is not fighting Ankalaev. I don’t know why that’s not happening. What I do like is that now Ankalaev has to pass another test. Because what the UFC is kind of saying here is we’ve got this star. And we know that this guy here could be a real potential issue for that star. They will fight eventually, but they will fight when we have no other option. And I like it. I like it.”
Is Cormier correct? I don’t know, but I wouldn’t say I like it, and I’d venture to say most in the MMA community wouldn’t like it either. However, it is tough to argue with Cormier’s logic.
Unless Pereira is injured or in need of rest following a busy 2024 that saw him knock out Jamahal Hill at UFC 300 in April and return to the Octagon to destroy Jiri Prochazka in June at UFC 302, it would appear Ankalaev’s next fight should have been for the title.
Is the UFC protecting Pereira?
“I don’t think you run the risk yet,” Cormier said. “And I’m not saying Pereira can’t fight or beat Ankalaev. I just feel like it is a very very difficult matchup, possibly the hardest matchup for him in the entire light heavyweight division. So I think he has to wait right, or you get him in there with someone else right now that’s a striker. Because all these strikers he’s just knocking out left and right, and every time he does that, Chael, his star just shines brighter. So maybe that is what happens for Alex Pereira, but I’m very rarely surprised when fights get announced. But I remember sitting in Manchester and they said UFC 308, and when I saw Rakic taking on Ankalaev, my jaw dropped. I was like, they actually did it. Like sometimes you got to protect that golden goose a little bit And that’s kind of what it feels like.”
Here is a look at the entire episode:
One thing that has made MMA, specifically the UFC, more compelling than boxing for the past two decades is the predictable nature of the matchups.
The best fighters fight each other, and it’s been a pretty simple concept. If the UFC is throwing obstacles at Ankalaev in hopes that he will stumble and allow Pereira to avoid the matchup, that doesn’t give me a great feeling.
However, most probably aren’t giving Rakic much chance to defeat Ankalaev, so the fight at UFC 308 could make the inevitable title challenge to Pereira a bit more compelling.
Perhaps the vision is for a victorious Ankalaev to call out Pereira in the Octagon to set up a massive pay-per-view in the first quarter of 2025. Let’s hope that’s the way this goes.
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