Ahead of their light-heavyweight title rematch at UFC 320 next weekend, Alex Pereira has ripped into Magomed Ankalaev for allegedly hiding from him when he visited the UFC’s Performance Institute this week.
“Something funny happened when we left the P.I.,” Pereira revealed on his YouTube channel. “I saw Ankalaev’s coach. He was there, and I was looking at him. You could tell he was looking at us, trying to say hi, but I didn’t want to talk too much. But I didn’t see Ankalaev. It was funny. When we left the P.I., I left and went to the car. When I got to the car, a guy from my team was still there, and he saw a P.I. staff, and she was saying, ‘Ankalaev, you can come. He already left.’
“He was hiding from me. He thinks I’m going to meet him, and I’m going to fight him. I’m not an idiot. We’re getting ready for a fight. I’m a professional. But to think about it and hide in a room, and the girl said, ‘You can come, he already left.’ What the f*ck?”
Tensions appear to have stepped up a notch between the two after Ankalaev wrote on X that he’d knock him out and send him back to “working at the tire shop again,” in their upcoming rematch.
“He’s talking nonsense,” Pereira said of that taunt. “… I was thinking he’s going to hide inside the P.I. with fear, now I know. I thought the UFC asked him to. When we got there, security came, and I thought, ‘It’s never been like this.’ I’ve never demonstrated that I wanted to fight, and I stayed there. But now I know he’s talking nonsense. If I say something, I’ll stay here and hold things down. But the point of him hiding inside the room because I’m in the same environment; he’s a chump.”
It’s quite possible that the UFC staff asked Ankalaev to steer clear of Pereira in the building, but Pereira still sees it as a sign of weakness as he sets his sights on avenging his unanimous decision loss to the Russian fighter back in March.
“Sometimes it’s like they say, it could be his manager,” Pereira admitted. “Everyone says that, but then we see that his manager isn’t there, so now it’s up to him. But really, he can say that and more. I’ll just stay in my lane. I’m never going to mess with him. I’m never going to get there. Of course, if he comes at me, I’m going to defend myself. But then what kind of champ is that? He’s a dogsh*t champ. That’s it. The only dumb thing I said. Not because of what he says, but today he has to hide in a room. He showed that he’s a chump. He’s hiding now, but we’ll be in the octagon. There’s nowhere to go unless he climbs the cage. He’s a dogsh*t champion.”
