It’s not the exact equivalent, but Chuck Liddell was still a rock star in the UFC when he stepped in to fight Rashad Evans at UFC 88. I can remember the tension in Atlanta when he circled Evans through the first round, ready to uncork the right hand that would bring the Philips Arena to its feet. In the second round, as that vibe enhanced and Liddell stalked his prey — a little incautiously, in retrospect — Evans let fly his own right hand that dropped Liddell like he’d been shot.
There was a gasp and a roar, followed by a stunned quiet as everyone processed what just happened. Liddell was out. Rock was dead.
Alex Pereira didn’t get knocked out by Magomed Ankalaev on Saturday night at UFC 313, but there was a funereal feel to the scorecards as they were being read. A unanimous decision in Ankalaev’s favor. So that’s how it comes to an end. Nondescript calf kicks, a stubborn resistance to takedowns and a gun left undrawn from the holster. Left to the gavels of all things. Rock stars are meant to go out with a bang, aren’t they? UFC CEO Dana White looked like he got a bad oyster when he wrapped the belt around Ankalaev’s waist.
That’s because if Pereira was rock and roll, Ankalaev is a hillside chorus of Amish hymns. The marketing team is going to have a task over there at UFC headquarters.
That’s what made the crowd gathered in Las Vegas and anyone who was actually able to order the fight at ESPN+ so bummed out. Pereira carried more than massive power in his hands for his title defense against the Dagestani fighter. He carried the plans for some wild parties to come. There was a move to heavyweight, which would either involve a fight with Jon Jones or Tom Aspinall. There was potential in the boxing ring, where he had Oleksandr Usyk’s eye. There was more Chama with a capital C, screaming at his targets as he fired off those imaginary arrows.
Now there’s only the rematch with Ankalaev.
That fight will be a mulligan for the UFC’s biggest active star, rather than a must-see affair. At 37 years old, Pereira doesn’t have all the time in the world. Worse, the fight game’s imagination isn’t as expansive as one would like to believe. If Ankalaev can turn Pereira into a dud firework, what would Aspinall do? What would Jones do? Hell, what would Ciryl Gane do? Ankalaev rubbed off a good portion of that magic sheen that “Poatan” carried, and that sheen has been a major part of the fun.
Not that Ankalaev didn’t do exactly as he needed to do to realize his own dream of becoming a champion. It was a thankless task he was given to take out the UFC’s most beloved champ. He took in more boos than the French Quarter did on Fat Tuesday this past week, and he did it with class. The UFC did everything in its power to stack the odds in Pereira’s favor. It even booked the fight for March, right in the thick of Ramadan, a time when devout Muslims generally steer clear of appointments.
For Ankalaev to be happy, everybody else — aside from the betting public and select others along the Caspian Sea — was going to be sad. He was supposed to be a Jon Fitch-like mandatory. The drowsy face of the meritocracy. He was Liz Carmouche coming for Ronda Rousey. The third round will be debated, but he won fair and square, whether you agree with the scorecards or not.
When Pereira looks back on it, there will be some regrets to go along with his updated resolves. He’ll see that the urgency wasn’t perhaps where it needed to be, and that when his corner of Glover Teixeira and Plinio Cruz were imploring him to come to life in the fifth round, it was for good reason. Can he point to a disrupted camp? The trip to Australia to uphold sponsor obligations just a couple of weeks before the fight? The circus of his own celebrity?
He can. But in the immediate aftermath, Pereira seemed more disappointed in Ankalaev’s approach.
“Giving him the win with a game plan like that kind of incentivizes people to do that,” he said post-fight. “People might say it’s a boring style, but when a guy gets a win doing that, it kind of makes people want to do that too. I hurt him against the fence, the only difference is I was the one against the fence.”
The creases from the links are still fresh in his back to prove it. It wasn’t the way Pereira wanted to end his light heavyweight rule. It wasn’t the way people wanted it to end, either. Fizzles have never been celebrated.
But that’s MMA for you. Its beauty is in the narratives that get destroyed, a sport with a strict anti-fairytale policy that runs counter to so many ideals. Yet one of the reasons Pereira is the star he is? It’s because he’s come back from losses before. Last time he lost, against Israel Adesanya at UFC 287 to drop his middleweight title less than two years ago, he vaulted up a weight class and skyrocketed into his status as the UFC’s greatest must-see fighter.
Can he do it again? That question is the foundation of what comes next.
Before fight week I asked Teixeira who, in his mind, came closest to Pereira in terms of his star power. Again, it wasn’t an exact equivalent, but the name he came up with was Liddell. “The Iceman,” from whom Teixeira learned so much when he himself came up as a fighter. Chuck had a stripper pole in his home, a mohawk and a fridge door full of hot sauces, along with a brawler’s mentality. He was a rock star.
Right up until the moment he wasn’t.
Alex Pereira,Chuck Liddell,Rashad Evans,Magomed Ankalaev,UFC,Tom Aspinall,exact equivalent
