The last time we saw Aleksandar Rakič in action was in April at the UFC 300 anniversary tournament, where, after a long period of heckling, he finally faced Jiří Procházka. Although he did well in the first round and won it on points, the Czech samurai finally broke him in the second five-minute round and won by TKO.
After the fight, Aleksandar revealed that he had to be put on antibiotics a few days before it and even ended up on a drip due to a staph infection, which affected his performance. “I’ve had a lot of fights, but I’ve never felt like I did at UFC 300, when my body shut down in one second,” he explained.
He does not regret not withdrawing from the match due to poor health.“It’s not always about whether you win, it’s also about how you perform. And I think the UFC obviously liked my performance against Procházek, plus they knew I wasn’t 100 percent. And so now they gave me a chance to fight with the number two division,” he explained, saying that he was pleasantly surprised when he got the offer to fight Ankalaev.
“He’s probably the most complex fighter in the division besides me. I expect a complete MMA match, that he will try to fight in a stance, but he will also want to wrestle and fight on the ground. But I’ve done my homework, I’ve been through hell in the last few weeks, doing my best to have an answer to everything he can use. He is left-handed, so I had very good left-handed sparring partners. I’m also always looking for southpaw fights against orthodox fighters on the Internet.”
It is highly likely that if he wins, Rakič could be the next to challenge champion Alex Pereira. However, he himself refuses to deal with it yet. “We can talk about it only after the match. But I believe that if I give a great performance, it will come naturally.“
We will find out how the expected duel with Ankalaev turns out already on Saturday evening. The main part of UFC 308 starts at a pleasant 8:00 p.m. The complete starting card looks like this:
Ilia Topuria vs. Max Holloway
Robert Whittaker vs. Khamzat Chimaev
Magomed Ankalaev vs. Aleksandar Rakic
Lerone Murphy vs. Dan Ige
Shara Magomedov vs. Armen Petrosyan
Prelims:
Geoff Neal vs. Rafael dos Anjos
Myktybek Orolbai vs. Mateusz Rebecca
Said Nurmagomedov vs. Daniel Santos
Abus Magomedov vs. Bruno Ferreira
Kennedy Nzechukwu vs. Chris Barnett
Farid Basharat vs. Victor Hugo
Rinat Fakhretdinov vs. Carlos Leal
Ismail Naurdiev vs. Bruno Silva
Ibo Aslan vs. Raffael Cerqueira
