Outside Source
Brazil’s Ronny Markes, a black belt under Andre Pederneiras and the current leader of Porrada TC in Las Vegas, will once again take part in the camps of Russian athletes. He hopes to welcome Alexander Volkov and Magomed Ankalaev in the first weeks of August to begin their fight camps together. Ankalaev will put his belt on the line in a rematch against Alex Pereira in the main event of UFC 320 in Las Vegas, while Volkov will face Jailton Almeida in the co-headliner of UFC 321 in Abu Dhabi on Oct. 25. Markes, who fought on week ago at a UAE Warriors card, discussed the upcoming training with Sherdog on Wednesday.
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“In fact, Ankalaev and Volkov have been training with us since 2021. Because I work with Ali Abdelaziz at Dominus, whenever someone heavier arrived, he would contact me to help them in Vegas in the last few weeks, whether with [Robert] Drysdale or at Xtreme Couture. When I opened Porrada CT in Vegas with my partner Marcelo Nunes, they started coming here to do most of their camp with me.”
As for the light heavyweight champion, Markes understands just how serious he is about fight preparation.
“Ankalaev is extremely focused. As soon as the fight ended and he won the belt, he returned to Russia and continued training,” said the Brazilian.
Expecting that “Poatan” will be more aggressive in the rematch, he thinks that his fighter will still be able to thwart the former two-division champion.
“There’s no comparison between Poatan and Ankalaev’s striking pedigrees, but when you combine all the elements of MMA, the Russian’s game of getting in and out, feinting and speed is more complete. And that’s how he prevailed in the first fight,” Markes analyzed.
Coach Believes Volkov Well-Equipped to Deflate Almeida’s Grappling
While Markes believes it will be another five-round battle against “Poatan,” He expects the Russian will once more retain his belt. In the heavyweight bout between Volkov and Almeida, Markes expects clear domination from his athlete.
“Alex’ level on the feet is very high, and on the ground, he’s my black belt,” Markes remarked. “He recently fought a NAGA no-gi against a heavyweight student of Robert Drysdale and got the win via submission. His takedown defense has improved a lot since he started training with us here in Vegas. We welcomed an Olympic heavyweight wrestler from Kazakhstan who trained with Alex for two months and helped a lot. I believe Volkov will beat ‘Malhadinho’ by knockout before the third round.”
According to the BJJ black belt, Volkov-Almeida was initially planned as the main event of UFC Rio on Oct. 11. Markes steered the Russian away from coming into hostile territory.
“I told him not to fight there,” Markes admitted. “He’ll have to face ‘Malhadinho,’ so there’s no point in fighting in Brazil. He even argued that we were Brazilian coaches, and I explained to him that it would be better to fight in the UAE, which is also a neutral venue.”
This article first appeared at Recent News on Sherdog.com
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