Photo by Jeff Bottari/Zuffa LLC

Alex Pereira challenges Magomed Ankalaev to accept $200K charity bet on UFC 313 fight

Pereira wants to put nearly a quarter of a million dollars on the line in his fight against Ankalaev in Las Vegas on Saturday.

by · MMAmania.com

Ryan Harkness breaks down daily mixed martial arts (MMA) news, providing unique context to stories that only 15 years of obsessing over the sport can provide, having worked for FOX Sports, Yahoo! Sports, UPROXX, MSN, Bleacher Report, HDNet and CagePotato, among others, before joining MMAmania.com in 2017.

Alex Pereira is looking to make things a little more interesting when he fights Magomed Ankalaev at UFC 313 on March 8th.

The UFC light heavyweight champion has challenged Ankalaev to put his money where his mouth is and bet $200,000 on the outcome of their title fight.

“Since you are so confident you will win, $200,000 to the winners charity of choice,” Pereira wrote in a message to Ankalaev and his manager on social media. “Win or lose this will help those in need. It’s in your hands.”

“We’ll see if someone wants to sponsor Ankalaev and put it in his name to make this bet,” Pereira said. “It’s no problem for me, the $200,000 I’ll take from my pocket.”

Pereira and Ankalaev have been going back and forth for over a year now ... or should we say Pereira and Ankalaev’s manager Ali Abdelaziz, who is known to post a lot of the social media trash talk coming from his fighters’ accounts.

It’s that trash led Pereira to pass over Ankalaev as a title challenger in the past, and why “Poatan” has made things a little more difficult for the Muslim fighter by demanding they fight a week into Ramadan. Observant Muslims cannot drink or eat until sundown during the month-long religious holiday, and many MMA fighters refuse to compete.

Ankalaev isn’t letting Ramadan stop him from fighting Pereira, and it sounds like he’ll accept Pereira’s bet as well.

“SalamuAlaykum we will answer tomorrow, Ramadan Mubarak,” Ankalaev’s account tweeted, with a picture taken from Abdelaziz’s phone.