Newly crowned light heavyweight champion Magomed Ankalaev continues to troll Jon ‘Bones’ Jones after claiming ownership of his old title at UFC 313.
Had Alex Pereira retained his 205lb belt at UFC 313, there would have been calls for the Brazilian to move up a division to challenge ‘Bones’ for heavyweight gold.
Magomed Ankalaev has expertly ruined that champ-champ party, although the silver lining is that his victory has also removed one of the major obstacles from Jon Jones’ unification fight – something that the Russian has been keen to drive home on social media.
Magomed Ankalaev takes aim at Jon Jones after claiming his old title
After Alex Pereira lost his light heavyweight title at UFC 313, Jon Jones shared a graphic on his social media pages showing that he has more UFC title defenses than every other current male champion combined.
“Small flex,” he wrote alongside the graphic, with Magomed Ankalaev brutally replying to the post: “Yes, but all this CHAMPIONs clean his big cheater we all know this.”
Over the past few days, the newly minted 205lb king has continued to roast Jones online, specifically calling out ‘Bones’ over his perceived ducking of interim champion Tom Aspinall.
“Johnny steroid machine was very disappointed. I beat Alex please fight big Tom Aspinall stop running,” he wrote on X, adding in a separate post “Big Ank [handshake] Big Tom.”
The promotion has yet to formally announce the unified heavyweight title fight between Jones and Aspinall, although Dana White did recently state that Jones will return “This Summer.”
“Jon Jones definitely wants to fight just when and where is what we’re working on now – I’m very confident that fight happens [in the summer],” he added at the UFC 313 post-fight press conference.
Tom Aspinall praises Ankalaev for his UFC 313 title-winning performance
Following the title fight out in Las Vegas, Tom Aspinall took to his YouTube channel to breakdown the main event and celebrate Magomed Ankalaev’s performance.
“This is a really good game plan from Ankalaev. What he’s doing is, even if he’s missing the takedowns, he’s using the grappling, just tie-ups from standing, just to gas out the arms and overwhelm Pereira a little bit, physically and mentally. He’s just hanging onto him.”
Whilst it wasn’t the most exciting fight to watch, Ankalaev’s gameplan has been widely praised across the MMA world – including an expert dissection from veteran coach Firas Zahabi.
“I’m sure Pereira is a great grappler, but as far as I’m aware, he only started grappling in his late thirties,” continued Aspinall.
“If you start grappling in your thirties, or your late twenties, and you’re against a guy like Ankalaev, who’s been grappling his whole life, you’re never going to have the condition of a guy who’s been grappling his whole life.”
Both Alex Pereira and Magomed Ankalaev have teased that a rematch will be booked for later this year – can you imagine if Dana White scheduled their rematch for the co-main event of a Jones vs Aspinall PPV?