UFC Abu Dhabi Post-Fight Show | REACTION To Magomed Ankalaev Getting Stoppage In Lackluster Headliner

**Mike Heck** (0:01)
You're listening to the Vox Media Podcast Network.
Those are the Victory Horns. And they sound, I would say, somewhat for the former UFC light heavyweight champion, Magomed Ankalaev, who, yes, he got the finish. It took a long time. And whether you want to blame Ankalaev, you want to blame Bogdan Guskov, I think both deserve a little bit of blame. It took a really long time to get there. It seemed like that fight took two and a half days to go down, but that capped off UFC Abu Dhabi. There's a lot of news and notes coming from this card that we'll get into. So let's get right into it. No time to waste, 3:08 PM Eastern Time. We already have a UFC wrapped and packed. And joining me, I'm Mike Heck, by the way, to unpack this roller coaster ride that was UFC Abu Dhabi, Mr. No Gray Area himself, the one and only Jed Meshew. Hi Jed, how we feeling?

**Jed Meshew** (1:26)
You said it took two and a half hours to get to the fight.
That fight took seven hours. It was...

**Mike Heck** (1:34)
Can we agree?

**Jed Meshew** (1:35)
Worst fight of the year, right? Like that's gotta be worst fight of the year.

**SPEAKER_3** (1:41)
I mean, I don't know, I mean, considering like this game...

**Jed Meshew** (1:43)
Steve, how much MVP was only 15 minutes?

**Mike Heck** (1:47)
That was bad, what was the other really bad UFC London fight?

**Jed Meshew** (1:50)
The heavyweight fight, the heavyweight tie fight, that that one, there are two really bad heavyweight fights. But again, those are 15 minutes. This is 20 minutes of mostly nothing.

**Mike Heck** (2:01)
This is pretty bad. I want to read something for the people since if you weren't a lot of you here are probably watching the fight, but I want to read this little blurb from Jed's live blog. I think this is after round two, maybe round three or during round two of the thing is around three.

**Jed Meshew** (2:18)
I don't know. They all blurred together.

**Mike Heck** (2:20)
Quote, the crowd is booing on the one hand, they should. This is an affront to human decency. There is no other hand. The only hands in this fight are the ones I'm typing with because Ankalaev and Guskov don't seem to be aware they have hands. They're jogging around in circles staring at each other like some mystic courtship ritual.
Ankalaev kicks them, pretends to punch.
But is it really pretending if your heart isn't in it? He lands a left hand, but it must have been an accident. Surely he wasn't trying to hurt Guskov. That could not be the case. The crowd is extremely loud in a very negative way. I hope that gives them some sense of joy because watching this quote unquote fight surely is not. This is live blogging at its best, Jed. This is incredible stuff.

**Jed Meshew** (3:11)
I think it's my best live blog.
I honestly do because the first round I did a real live blog because I was like, all right, this is the first. I was like, it's slow. And then when it became very apparent that this was just it, I was like, well, I'm going to just start having fun because I got to find a way to enjoy this. And so the next three rounds, I was really prepared.
In my head, I knew what I was going to start the fifth round with. But then Ankalaev immediately tackled him. I was like, I think he's going to finish him. So I don't get to really do it. And this sort of backtrack, but I was just like, you know, what the hell was that, man? It was a terrible fight.

**Mike Heck** (3:53)
A lot of back and forth on Twitter, a lot of people are like, oh, it's Ankalaev's fault. Other people are saying, no, it's, I mean, it's kind of his fault, but it's mostly Guskov's fault for not engaging. Does anyone get the lion's share of the blame here? Or is this just two dudes who just didn't do the thing today?

**Jed Meshew** (4:13)
My policy has always been the way the, like, this is not the first bad fight, but every bad fight, people say this, right? It's like, well, one guy won and the other guy blaming on the guy who lost and should have done more. It's like, yes, but here's the thing.
That guy lost, so he's already punished for this. And his punishment is that he lost.
Ankalaev needs to be punished for that. That was an abomination. And like, he could have just, he could have, the fourth and fifth rounds weren't that bad because he was just like, I'll tackle him. He could have at least just started doing that. It would have been fine. But instead he did the big thing where he was like, I will just slowly kickbox you, not to death, but to boredom. And I will occasionally punch you because you forget that we're fighting because nothing is happening.