According to Magomed Ankalaev, Alex Pereira took some time to consider his next move.

Pereira is set to face Sergei Pavlovich in his second heavyweight outing in the co-main event of the final numbered UFC event of the year.

‘Poatan’ will have a lot of questions to answer on December 12 after coming up short when making the move up from light heavyweight.

Amid doubts over Pereira’s future as a heavyweight, his former rival has claimed that it wasn’t set in stone that he’d be staying in this division.

How much has your opinion of Alex Pereira changed since his UFC Freedom 250 loss?

Magomed Ankalaev says he couldn’t fight Alex Pereira next due to rival taking time to consider his next move

Since his loss at the White House in June, it has been pretty clear that Alex Pereira is still focused on heavyweight and achieving his goal of becoming the division’s champion.

However, Magomed Ankalaev claims that there were some delays in ‘Poatan’ booking his next fight due to the dilemma of whether he should return to light heavyweight.

Ankalaev has previously pushed for a Pereira trilogy and said that he’d even be willing to move up a weight class in order to make this happen.

In a recent interview, he reiterated this point and said that this is something he was trying to make a reality following his win over Bogdan Guskov in July.

“We wanted Pereira and I wanted that rematch,” Ankalaev told BOSTANOV MMA, translated via YouTube. “I am doing a lot to get that fight, we even said that even if it’s in the heavyweight division, we can make it happen.”

The former champion went on to say that while he’s been ready to fight again, he’s been left “on the sidelines” due to the UFC not being able to find him an opponent.

According to Ankalaev, any chance of Pereira being next was ruled out due to the Brazilian taking some time to plan out his next move before the co-main event of UFC 335 was announced.

“[Paulo] Costa keeps finding excuses and Pereira was thinking about whether to stay at heavyweight or move down so he was pushed aside,” he said.

Magomed Ankalaev says Alex Pereira beat him with a ‘lucky punch’

Magomed Ankalaev wants the opportunity to prove that he is unquestionably a better fighter than Alex Pereira.

In their rematch last October, ‘Poatan’ got his revenge by stopping the Russian in just 80 seconds, tying their rivalry at one win each.

Ankalaev recently reflected on this during the interview and said, according to translated captions via Championship Rounds, that he was caught by a “lucky punch”.

“His business with me isn’t settled at all. You could call what happened a lucky punch. That’s how he beat me. I think they knew I had some kind of injury. I don’t think any fighter had ever rushed at me like that before. If he hadn’t known I was injured, or that there was some issue, I don’t think it would have ended so quickly.”