Light-heavyweight’s Thiago Santos and Magomed Ankalaev will square off in the main event of an upcoming UFC Fight Night event on March 12th.
A former title contender in the division, Santos picked up a unanimous decision win over Johnny Walker last month at UFC Fight Night 193.
However, the Brazilian had suffered three losses in a row prior to that, though the first of those actually raised his stock when he took Jon Jones the distance, eventually losing out by split decision in their title fight back in July of 2019.
Santos then suffered a third round submission loss to the man who has since gone on to win the belt, Glover Teixeira, while in March of this year he also lost out on the scorecards to Aleksander Rakic.
That leaves the No.5 ranked Santos with a 4-3 record during his run in the UFC’s 205lb division, though when you also include his previous lengthy run at middleweight that improves to 14-8, including 11 victories by way of strikes.
Now he goes up against the in-form Ankalaev, whose recent victory over another former title contender Volkan Oezdemir late last month took his winning streak to 7 fights.
During his run he’s picked up back-to-back stoppage wins over Ion Cutelaba and a decision victory against Nikita Krylov among others, leaving him ranked No.6 heading into this match-up.
At this early stage details about the card it will headline are scarce, to the extent that even the exact number of the event is still unknown for now.
