Opinion: A Developing Situation

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We’ve had a good chunk of time to digest the light heavyweight title fight booked for UFC 307 , where Alex Pereira will defend his championship against Khalil Rountree on Oct. 5 in Salt Lake City. To say no one expected that booking was an understatement. There appeared to be a clear-cut No. 1 contender in Magomed Ankalaev . Sure, roughly a week before the Pereira-Rountree announcement, Ankalaev had been booked to face Aleksandar Rakic on Oct. 26, but there had also been rumblings that Pereira wanted to test himself at heavyweight. Plus, Rountree was just coming off a suspension for a PED violation. The Ultimate Fighting Championship wouldn’t reward someone coming off a suspension for PEDs, right?

Those of us who thought that wouldn’t happen were instantly proven wrong when the announcement was made. Then again, none of us thought the UFC was in discussions with Rountree, so the thought never even crossed our minds. If we eliminate the PED suspension—which Rountree has admitted to and proclaimed to be the result of a tainted supplement—Rountree’s case isn’t terrible. He has won five fights in a row, four of them coming via stoppages from strikes, and earned three post-fight performance bonuses. That type of track record is exactly what the UFC is looking to promote—someone who finishes fights in an exciting manner. However, Rountree also appears to be someone Pereira can bowl over with minimal effort. Rountree is an excellent striker, but Pereira is bigger, longer and more technical in that area. Given Rountree’s aversion to the mat, it’s hard to believe he’s the superior ground fighter, either, despite having many more years of experience in MMA. It isn’t an impossibility for Rountree to win, but he is a major longshot.

Given Ankalaev’s track record, it makes even less sense that Rountree was booked against Pereira. Technically, Rountree does have a longer winning streak than Ankalaev. However, Ankalaev hasn’t suffered a loss in 12 consecutive fights. He has a highly controversial draw in there—it would have made him the light heavyweight champion had the judges seen the fight the way the majority of the viewers did, according to MMADecisions.com—and a no contest with Johnny Walker that was rectified in glorious fashion when Ankalaev decisively won earlier this year. Ankalaev’s level of competition has also been decidedly higher than Rountree’s. While Ankalaev has a reputation as a boring fighter, six of his 10 UFC victories have come before the final bell, four of them in a violent enough fashion to secure a performance bonus. The only immediate logical reason I could think of is Ankalaev might not be able to make the fight to Utah due to visa issues. Ankalaev trains out of Russia, and I would venture to guess it was later in the process from when the UFC typically schedules a pay-per-view main event. So perhaps the travel issues prevented Ankalaev from fighting in early October. Do I actually believe that’s the case? Nope.

Whatever the reason, I don’t believe Ankalaev or Pereira are ducking one another. While I do believe ducking opponents happens within MMA, I believe it is a rarity and something I would view as the last option to consider. After all, it takes a ballsy person to step into a cage and throw fists in the first place. It also isn’t conducive to the type of attitude that requires success in MMA.

Both Pereira and Ankalaev have expressed a desire to throw down, too. After Pereira’s two most recent victories—over Jamahal Hill and Jiri Prochazka —Ankalaev was quick to jump on X (formerly known as Twitter) to express his desire to challenge the Brazilian for his championship. Pereira has responded to the recent calls that he’s ducking Ankalaev by claiming he asked the UFC about fighting him before the company came back to him with the Rountree offer. Of course, Pereira isn’t helping further his claim that he’s happy to fight Ankalaev by entertaining the idea of dropping down to middleweight one last time to challenge Dricus Du Plessis . Again, I don’t believe Pereira is ducking Ankalaev, but it’s not a good look when the Russian is a more than deserving challenger. For his part, Ankalaev claimed the UFC never offered him Pereira—something that’s easy to believe given how the UFC apparently feels about him.

The more I thought about it, the more I delved into conspiracy-theory territory. What if the UFC is purposely dragging out the situation between Pereira and Ankalaev in hopes of building a more intense rivalry? There has been a shortage of blood feuds over the last several years, and there’s nothing that sells better than two guys with an outright hatred of each other. The more Pereira and Ankalaev can jaw-jack with each other, the greater the animosity will be. After all, it isn’t like their stories don’t match up. Just because Pereira asked the UFC about Ankalaev doesn’t mean the UFC was going to bring up Pereira to Ankalaev. Who’s to say the UFC isn’t pumping both sides full of crap in hopes of the two boiling over?

Even the novice MMA history buff knows about the rift between Tito Ortiz and Chuck Liddell —the UFC’s original friends-turned-foes rivalry. Ortiz claimed he was dragging out the fight in hopes of building it up into a more lucrative event, whereas Liddell believed “The Huntington Beach Bad Boy” was ducking him. Liddell stated he schooled Ortiz during their practice sessions, which is why Ortiz refused to fight him. The speed in which Ortiz rushed back to defend his title after Liddell fell to Randy Couture didn’t help Ortiz’s cause. Even so, many would argue that karma got the better of him, as Couture upended Ortiz. Regardless, Ortiz and Liddell did eventually collide, and their first fight was one of the most anticipated bouts in MMA history up to that point. The sequel is reputed to be the first UFC PPV to break a million buys.

Pereira and Ankalaev have never been friends, but they have been fairly respectful in their callouts, at least initially. Stirring things up to the point that they are accusing each other of ducking the fight is a pretty good recipe to help get the two generally collected customers seething. I don’t expect we’ll get something akin to the shoving match at a promotional event that blew up the Jon Jones - Daniel Cormier feud, but anything from either one of these men would be largely out of character. If it were true the UFC is purposely brewing things up, it would hardly be a bulletproof plan. While Pereira and Ankalaev are both heavy favorites in their upcoming contests, that certainly does not guarantee a successful outcome. Rountree is one of the more dangerous one-punch strikers in the division, and Rakic is a bigger and more diverse danger than Rountree. With that said, the side effects of the outcomes if they don’t emerge victorious aren’t exactly terrible, either. If Rountree wins, the UFC has one of the biggest Cinderella stories in the history of the sport. No disrespect intended, but Rountree’s reign would likely look very similar to Matt Serra ’s, meaning the UFC could still eventually get to Pereira-Ankalaev for the title. The route could be circuitous—perhaps Pereira would regain his title in a rematch, or perhaps Ankalaev snatches the title from Rountree—but it could heighten the tension between the two.

In the event the UFC truly doesn’t care for Ankalaev, it could just do without him being in the title picture at all. Which brings us to his contest with Rakic. Don’t let Rakic’s present two-fight skid fool you. The first loss came at the hands of Jan Blachowicz when Rakic’s ACL blew out. The second loss saw him ahead of Jiri Prochazka before Prochazka turned on the jets and smoked him with a brutal finishing sequence. Those are two former champions, and Rakic was competitive with them. He most certainly can snap Ankalaev’s undefeated skid. There’s little for Rakic to lose in this endeavor. There isn’t anyone else he could beat that would get him into title contention sooner than Ankalaev. Not even Prochazka or Hill, given that Pereira already has victories over them. It helps Rakic that he would be doing the UFC a favor in knocking the unfavorable Ankalaev out of the picture. Should Rakic lose, he’s in the same spot he was prior to his contest with Ankalaev. Very few are going to hold a loss to Ankalaev against him.

However, should both Pereira and Ankalaev win—as we have established, that is the most likely outcome—the trash talk should only intensify, not to mention the stakes are raised. How can the stakes be raised in a title fight? Well, maybe those stakes aren’t raised, but the promotional stakes are higher. Pereira adds another title defense to his resume, and Ankalaev’s undefeated streak is further extended. The UFC will most likely have to grant Ankalaev another shot at the title at some point, but the organization is going to wring everything it can out of it.