Ankalaev Grinds Past Guskov at UFC Abu Dhabi as Temirov Steals the Night

Magomed Ankalaev got the win, but he'll want the tape burned. The No. 1 light heavyweight ground his way to a fifth-round TKO over No. 9 Bogdan Guskov in Saturday's UFC Abu Dhabi main event, moving to 22-2-1 in a fight that generated far more shrugs than highlights.

Ankalaev's finish rate has never been the selling point — he owns just 12 knockouts across 22 wins and zero submissions — and this performance leaned into the criticism rather than answering it. Guskov, who came in with 15 KOs among his 18 victories and a reputation for chaos, couldn't turn it into fireworks. He falls to 18-4-1 and has now been stopped for the first time in the promotion in this fashion.

The Knockout Everyone Actually Remembers

If the headliner was forgettable, Ramazan Temirov made sure the card wasn't. The unranked flyweight ran straight through No. 10 Steve Erceg and put him down face-first inside a single round, the kind of finish that turns a name from a database entry into a talking point overnight. Pros lit up the timeline afterward, with the general sentiment being that Erceg needs a serious step back.

Temirov is now 20-3 with 13 finishes to his name, and he just handed a top-10 flyweight the worst kind of loss. Erceg, whose game has always been built on his six submission wins rather than power, drops to 14-5 and has real questions to answer after getting flattened in under five minutes.

The math here is simple. Temirov didn't just win — he leapfrogged a lot of the noise around the division with one strike. Erceg had spent the last stretch pitching himself as a gatekeeper near the top of the rankings, and now he's the one who got tested and failed.

So Abu Dhabi delivered a split verdict: a main event that did its job and nothing more, and an undercard finish that'll outlive it in the clip reels. Ankalaev keeps his spot at the front of the line at 205, but if he wants the crowd back on his side, he'll need the next one to look nothing like this.