Magomed Ankalaev claims he no longer respects Alex Pereira following UFC PI incident

Magomed Ankalaev has said he doesn’t respect Alex Pereira in the wake of their UFC Performance Institute run-in.

In the main event of UFC 320, Magomed Ankalaev will defend the UFC light heavyweight championship against former champion Alex Pereira. It comes after ‘Big Ank’ was able to take the belt from ‘Poatan’ earlier this year, with many believing that Ankalaev is the obvious favorite to win the rematch.

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A few days ago, things seemed to heat up a fair bit when Pereira accused Ankalaev of hiding from him at the UFC Performance Institute. He went off on a rant about the champion, leading many to wonder what was true and what was fiction.

After an actual interaction between them was caught on camera, Ankalaev had the following to say when chatting to reporters.

Anaklaev hits out at Pereira

“Honestly, up until recently, I had respect for him as a fighter and as a person,” Ankalaev told MMA Junkie and other media through an interpreter Thursday. “I no longer respect him because, OK, trash talk is something to hype up the fight, maybe you say something funny, or to be salty, but when you lie to people and say, ‘I saw him, and he hid,’ and stuff like that he recently said, I don’t respect people like that. Why would you lie about something that never happened?”

“The problem here is that he was talking all this crap just a few days ago, and then today I saw him – it was just me and my coach and him and his whole team – I approached him and I said, ‘Hey, guys. You were lying that I was hiding and stuff. I’m right here right now. What are you going to do?,” Ankalaev said. “He responded by saying, ‘Oh this girl said that, this guy that said that,’ and he starting making stuff up on the spot.

“I have no problem, but say he gets close to me next week and decides to get too close to me, of course, I’m going to defend myself. Other than that, we’ll see everything in the cage.”

Quotes via MMA Junkie