Just days after becoming the UFC light heavyweight champion, Magomed Ankalaev is already breaking records on the UFC’s social media.
At UFC 313 on Saturday, Alex Pereira‘s light heavyweight title reign came to an end after he was narrowly beaten by Magomed Ankalaev.
Despite Ankalaev receiving criticism ahead of the fight for claiming he would outstrike the former kickboxing champion, he went on to outstrike Pereira over five rounds.
And with that, the Brazilian’s performance was questioned by UFC commentator, Joe Rogan, who labeled Pereira’s performance as ‘uncharacteristic’.
Magomed Ankalaev breaks Islam Makhachev record with social media views
‘Poatan’ was undoubtedly the UFC’s biggest active star and because of that, his loss wasn’t taken very well by some fans.
Although a large majority of the fanbase aren’t too keen on the Russian’s fight style, Ankalaev’s win over Pereira did in fact do record numbers for the UFC on social media.
So far in 2025, we have had five title fights and for each title fight, the UFC social media team captures the moment when the champion gets the belt wrapped around them.
Prior to UFC 313, the champion who garnered the most amount of views with their title wrapping moment, was lightweight champion, Islam Makhachev, with 19.1 million views.
Despite that, Ankalaev’s moment on Saturday night exceeded Makhachev’s as the video of him getting the title wrapped around him by UFC boss, Dana White, has accumulated 26.8 million views so far.
Magomed Ankalaev already in negotiations for rematch
Following the event, Dana claimed that an immediate rematch between Ankalaev and Pereira will ‘probably’ happen, considering how close the fight was.
And with White’s comments, Pereira vowed to his fans that in the rematch, he will make ‘some adjustments’ to make sure he reclaims his 205lb title.
Before the 32-year-old Russian even has a chance to revel in his huge win, Ankalaev has revealed he is already in negotiations with the promotion for the rematch.