Ankhalev's record is kind of overrated: analyzing his career and past performances:

Let me start by saying that I'm not claiming Ankhalev is some bum, nor that he doesn't deserve a titleshot, however some people have been acting like he's the LHW equivalent of Islam/Umar and after going back to watch some of his fights I had missed I can confidently say this is no true. Right now Ankhalev is being marketed as someone who's in a 13 fight winstreak, but what that stat doesn't mention is that he had a draw against Jan followed by a NC agaisnt walker. Most importantly what caught my attention is that Ankhalev doesn't have a single Submission win in the UFC, and In fact almost all of his KOs/TKOs happened against fairly mediocre competition, let's look at his resume: His first fight in the UFC is a loss agaisnt Paul Craig via submission. Then he KOs Marcin Prachino who'se record is 4-10 in the UFC. His next win is a decision against Kildson abreu who's 1-3 in the UFC He then KO's Lungiambula who's 2-5 in the UFC. Then he fights Ion Cutelaba twice in a row because of a bizarre stoppage by the ref in the middle of an exchange, which leads to a rematch. Next he gets 2 decision wins against Nikita krylov and then Oezdemir respectively, which are decent wins so no notes here. Ankhalev wins a decision against Thiago Santos but gets dropped twice in the process by an old Santos who's only won once in his last 5 fights (the one victory being against Johny Walker). Then he KOs Anthony smight who is Anthony smith and has lost 21 times in his career. And after that comes his odd fight against Jan where he almost gets his leg chopped off, but then manages to wrestle Jan into a draw, resulting in a performance that was disappointing for both fighters simultaneously. Then for some god forsaken reason he knees Walker in the face and the fight is called a controversial NC. Now because of his foul Ankhalev has to waste his time once again with a rematch, where he predictably KOs Walker as is tradition. And finally you have his decision against Rakic who's by far the best opponent in his resume, even though he's currently on a 3 loss streak. Now of course LHW is a weak division in the first place so we have to temoer our expectations, and matchup wise it's fair to say Ankhalev will be Alex's biggest challenge in the UFC, however even then i think a lot of the hype behind Ankhalev has more to do with the fact his name ends with a V rather than his actual career. While Ankhalev could totally end up beating Pereira later this week i still haven't seen anything that warrants the ammount of confidence I've seen exhibited by people that claim Ankhalev will dogwalk Pereira, these are just my thoughts of course and anything can happen in the UFC so don't let this post rile you up if you're an Ankhalev fan. submitted by /u/Devlnchat [link] [comments]