Magomed
Ankalaev still has one mountain left to climb in the
Ultimate Fighting Championship light heavyweight division.
A top contender for the promotion’s 205-pound throne, the
30-year-old Russian has not gone down to defeat in more than five
years. Ankalaev holds a 10-1-1 record across his 12 appearances
inside the Octagon, his resume highlighted by wins over
Anthony
Smith,
Thiago
Santos,
Volkan
Oezdemir and
Nikita
Krylov. More than half (nine) of his 17 professional victories
have resulted in finishes, six of them inside one round.
As Ankalaev awaits word on his next assignment from UFC
matchmakers, a look at a few of the rivalries that have helped
chart his course to this point:
Ankalaev captured the vacant World Fighting Championship Akhmat
light heavyweight title when he took care of the highly regarded
M-1
Global veteran with punches and a head kick in the fourth round
of their featured WFCA 30 attraction on Oct. 4, 2016 at the Akhmat
Fight Club in Grozny, Russia. Grishin succumbed to blows 73 seconds
into Round 4, suffering his first defeat in nearly five years. A
little more than a minute into the fourth round of a
hyper-competitive affair, Ankalaev floored his countryman with a
brutal left hook to the jaw. Grishin collapsed to a seated
position, where he was met with a flurry of punches. Anakalaev was
relentless. As Grishin returned to his feet under fire, he ate a
clean head kick, hit the deck for a second time and could not
withstand the barrage of punches that followed. Ankalaev fought
twice more for the WFCA organization, then signed with the UFC.
The opportunistic former British Association of Mixed Martial Arts
champion pulled the proverbial rabbit out of his hat when he
submitted Ankalaev with a Hail Mary triangle choke in the third
round of their UFC Fight Night 127 prelim on March 17, 2018 at the
O2 Arena in London. Craig cinched the finish 4:59 into Round 3. The
previously unbeaten Ankalaev was utterly dominant for all but a few
seconds of the match. He outlanded Craig by a 59-18 margin in
significant strikes and racked up nearly seven minutes of control
time. It was all for naught. Ankalaev pressed his advantage in top
position with time winding down in the third round but failed to
keep his left arm out of harm’s way. Craig snatched the exposed
appendage, clamped down on the triangle and prompted an unexpected
tapout with one second remaining on the clock. A dejected Ankalaev
sat stunned in the center of the cage.
Ankalaev wiped out the Moldovan berserker with punches in the first
round of their long-delayed UFC 254 light heavyweight rematch on
Oct. 24, 2020 at the Flash Forum in Abu Dhabi, United Arab
Emirates. The stoppage was called 4:19 into Round 1. Ankalaev was
patient and measured. He connected with a front kick to the face,
drew his counterpart into punching range and let his hands and
reflexes do the rest. The Akhmat Fight Team standout knocked down
the Cutelaba with a counter straight left, reset and went back on
the hunt. Ankalaev answered an ill-conceived backfist from “The
Hulk” with a crushing left hook, pounced on his fallen rival and
rendered him unconscious with a volley of punches and hammerfists.
It was a most decisive finish. Ankalaev—who had beaten the onetime
“Fight of the Night” winner under less-desirable circumstances
eight months earlier—moved to 2-0 in their head-to-head series.
The Polish powerhouse battled to a split draw with Ankalaev in the
UFC 282 headliner on Dec. 10, 2022 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas,
leaving the 205-pound penthouse vacant in wake of former champion
Jiri
Prochazka’s reign-ending shoulder injury. Judge Michael Bell
cast a 48-47 scorecard for Blachowicz, while Derek Cleary saw it
48-46 for Ankalaev and Sal D’Amato scored it 47-47. Ankalaev set
the tone early with crisp punching combinations and punishing front
kicks to the body. Blachowicz answered by shifting gears and
blowing out the
Xtreme Couture rep’s base with vicious kicks to the lower leg.
They eventually hobbled Ankalaev to such a degree that he was
forced to switch stances. He made the necessary tactical
adjustments in the fourth and fifth rounds, where he crowded
Blachowicz with pressure, executed multiple takedowns and chipped
away with substantial ground-and-pound, all while piling up copious
amounts of control time. Ankalaev rose to his feet after Round 5,
convinced he had done enough, then left the cage in disgust moments
later.