Jamahal Hill anticipates a close fight between Alex Pereira and Magomed Ankalaev at UFC 313, but ultimately expects Bruce Buffer to say “and new” to close the show.
Hill, who came up short in his attempt to regain the UFC belt when challenging “Poatan” in 2024, broke down the championship contest on his YouTube channel and he’s siding with Ankalaev on March 8.
“I’m gonna get hate for this one — but I get hate anyway, f*ck y’all,” Hill said. “I’m probably going to go with Magomed. I just got a feeling that he has more tools to win. Obviously Alex has that one-hit wonder. If he catches you, he can put you away, but I believe Magomed also has that. He has his speed, the patience, the counter. He’s been in this position before and he let the title slip out of his hands once before, and I believe he’ll be a lot more focused, locked in for this. I believe he just has more more ways to win. I’m gonna go with Magomed Ankalaev.”
Ankalaev fought Jan Blachowicz for the vacant throne in 2022, but they went to a draw. A month later, Hill won the title over Pereira’s friend Glover Teixeira in Brazil, but vacated it due to injury. Pereira captured the belt in 2023 and went on to defend it three times with three knockouts the following year.
Hill said “I don’t f*cking like Ankalaev” for things that were said in the past, but still thinks he was unfairly passed on for a title shot for Khalil Rountree in 2024.
“I’ve had a lot of time to think about this fight, how it would go down,” Hill said. “Part of the reason why I came back nine months, jumped in to camp seven months off of Achilles injury was because I didn’t want Magomed to fight Pereira before I got a chance to get to him just because I know the name value and the money fight. I made a lot of money off of that fight.
“But still though, there’s a lot of tools at Magomed’s disposal to win this fight, as well as Alex. Now, the things that I truly think makes Alex great, and make him such a tall task and challenge, he’s new to MMA and he’s fallen in love with learning the sport of MMA, so it’s all new to him. He’s always working, he’s always grinding, he’s always going out getting work with new guys, getting different looks and things like that, and I believe that’s put him in a really, really good place, and at a high level so early in his MMA career. He’s a workaholic. From what I can tell, he’s always in good shape and all those things. He don’t really get too far distracted or off to the wayside with the wrong stuff. That’s something that I believe works really, really well for him.
“He’s got power, we know that. His pressure is a lot more present inside the cage, when you’re in there with him, as opposed to how it may look on film. Those low kicks, he’s got his philosophies and his little ways and tweaks to his techniques that he does that makes them work very, very well for him. And kicks, even in the last fight when Khalil landed the punch that kind of dropped him for a second, that check that question mark kick he threw fast, extremely, extremely fast, had Khalil not been one of the shorter guys in the division, that kick lands clean, that kick lands clean and it lands flush. He’s got a lot of tricks. He’s one of the most polished strikers not just in the sport now, but in kickboxing of all time.”
Having said all that, Hill feels that the MMA community is not giving Ankalaev the credit he deserves in the striking department. The Dagestani light heavyweight isn’t a former two-division champion in kickboxing like Pereira, but has scored knockouts in six of his 11 UFC wins, including stoppages of Johnny Walker, Anthony Smith, Ion Cutelaba and Marcin Prachnio.
“Magomed’s striking is seriously being slept on here. It’s seriously, seriously being slept on here,” Hill said. “I don’t believe that Pereira sits back and kind of wants to fight out of the pocket. He wants to put the pressure on him and land good hard shots from the outside. Problem with that is Magomed is a counter striker. I you go back and you look at his last few fights, he counters. He waits for you to throw, waits for you to overexert yourself. And even off of faints, if you faint and puts your feet in the wrong spot, he’s countering. He counters with combinations, they’re fast, and he mixes up his punches. He has a variety of strikes available at at his disposal.
“There’s the fact that he’s a southpaw. I believe Pereira has now had a little bit more experience in time to adjust to fighting southpaws, but each southpaw is different. I believe that will still present somewhat of a challenge for him in the beginning, early stages of finding, before he’s able to figure his way out. He wasn’t able to start breaking down Khalil until later in the rounds. And the thing about that was he was able to do that a lot because of the size difference. Magomed doesn’t have that problem, he’s about almost as tall as Pereira is.”
Hill sees low kicks and body jabs as goods ways to force Ankalaev to make mistakes and advises Pereira to work on combinations instead of waiting for the one-shot knockout blow. When forced to clinch, use knees to hurt Ankalaev, because wrestling with Ankalaev could be a task too difficult to deal with.
“I believe the wrestling will pay a huge factor,” Hill said, “Whenever Alex tries to corner him, because Alex wants to get you up against the cage, he wants to corner you and then he wants to let those big shots go and hit you with that power and kind of put you away there. I believe Magomed should sit back, be patient and be ready for those counters because that’s when Khalil was landing. He was landing off of counters. Magomed’s counters is bigger, he’s got longer arms, he counters with more combos, and he brings his feet with his punches more. I believe that will be huge for him there.
“Be patient, let him try that power because whenever Pereira enters, he enters. It’s always that one big shot. The big shot that he that he enters with to kind of stun you to where he can start unloading combinations on you from there. One shot against Magomed will get you countered and could possibly get him knocked out. I see a place where Magomed counters and knocks out Alex. That could be a thing. He can also control take control of the fight with distance and range with the wrestling. Early on, if Alex does come out gunshy and doesn’t want to kind of put that pressure, wants to sit back to the wayside like we seen him doing [on] the first Jiri [Prochazka] fight, he kind of more so danced around a little bit before he kind of tried to implement power. I believe that’s when Magomed can implement his wrestling and kind of take control of that even if it’s to wear him down and tire him out and ultimately start to put himself ahead. If he puts himself ahead early, he can put Alex in a position to where he’s now, OK, I got to go and get my shots off on this guy. That’s another place where those counters can be open.”
