UFC Vegas 44 Fighter to Watch: Brendan Allen
Promising middleweight looks to earn third victory of the year in short-notice showdown with Chris Curtis on Saturday
Name: Brendan Allen
Nickname: All In
Record: 17-4 overall; 5-1 UFC
Division: Middleweight
Team: Sanford MMA
Opponent: Chris Curtis (27-8 overall, 1-0 UFC)
Brendan Allen is a perfect example of how far too many fans and observers get caught up in a moment, in a story, in a narrative and refuse to edit their opinions.
Last year, when everyone was falling over themselves to heap praise on Kevin Holland as he rattled off victories over unranked and short-notice opponents before beating “Jacare” to secure his fifth win of the year, no — and I mean no one — had much to say about Allen, who submitted Holland in less than nine minutes in his promotional debut the previous October.
Holland was the cool story, the fun story, the guy with all the momentum, and even though Allen had beaten him handily and earned victories over quality middleweights Tom Breese and Kyle Daukaus following that contest, very few people wanted to veer off course from guiding Holland towards contention to point out that he’d been thoroughly out-grappled and choked out a little over a year earlier by a guy no one seemed to mention as an emerging threat.
Maybe part of that was because Allen — as he likes to put it — “shit the bed” against Sean Strickland in mid-November, jumping into a catchweight engagement with the returning middleweight a week after his scheduled fight with Ian Heinisch fell through for the second time.
At the time, Strickland was “just a guy” to most people — a former welterweight who returned to action only a couple weeks prior following a two-year hiatus — and he went out there and picked Allen apart. The second-round stoppage loss seemed, at the time, like an ugly loss to an unproven competitor… except it wasn’t.
Strickland had been a rising star in the division, amassing a 15-fight winning streak at 185 pounds before moving to middleweight, and he’d looked sharp in his return to action two weeks earlier against veteran tough guy Jack Marshman, pushing his record to 16-0 in the division. Since then, Strickland has added wins over Krzysztof Jotko and Uriah Hall to push his overall winning streak to five, his middleweight record to 19-0 overall, and climb into the Top 10.
It was an ugly loss to a Top 10 fighter, just no one knew it at the time.
Since then, Allen has rebounded with a first-round submission win over Karl Roberson and a dominant decision victory over Punahele Soriano, who entered their contest with an undefeated record and first-round finishes in seven of his first eight fights.
Originally scheduled to face Brad Tavares on Saturday, Allen will instead face Chris Curtis, who was tagged in after another Xtreme Couture representative, Roman Dolidze, was briefly attached to the fight.
He’s 5-1 in the UFC, 17-4 overall, and is coming off the most complete showing of his career. He trains with a terrific team at Sanford MMA, has already finished someone everyone was high on at this time last year (and continue to talk about now), and has the kind of diverse arsenal that could make him an intriguing addition to the Top 15 and the championship chase in the coming years.
Did I mention he’s only 25?
I don't know how or why this happens or if I’m the only one that thinks about these things, but it is genuinely strange to me, and Allen isn’t the only current emerging talent that has suffered from this kind of lack of recognition.
I mean, everyone was fawning over Sean O’Malley for a pair of decision wins over guys that struggled mightily in the UFC at the outset of his career, but paid limited attention to this cat named Cory Sandhagen who survived a gnarly armbar attempt to secure a second-round stoppage win over tenured veteran Iuri Alcantara in his sophomore appearance in the Octagon.
O’Malley talked more and was someone the most prominent voices in the sport fixated on; all the other guy did was beat a far more experienced fighter and graduate to contention in his fourth UFC fight. Two years later, O’Malley still hasn’t faced a ranked opponent, yet alone beaten one, but I digress…
Allen strikes me as one of those competitors that is being judged on his worst moment — the Strickland loss — and not getting the credit he deserves for the victories he’s amassed.
Not to harp on the Holland thing, but he choked the guy out in less than two rounds, while both Derek Brunson and Marvin Vettori — two guys currently stationed in the Top 5, one of whom earned a title shot after beating him — couldn’t find a finish against him. Every fight is different and Holland has surely improved since that loss to Allen, but if we’re going to hold one or two people up for halting him impressive run and out-hustling him in the Octagon, shouldn’t we acknowledge the guy that did it more than a year earlier as well?
But it’s not just Holland either — Tom Breese always carried a ton of hype, even if it never translated; Kyle Daukaus remains someone many see as having upside in the division; Roberson is flawed, but has fought some tough competition, and Soriano had a bunch of buzz heading into their clash, and got completely out-classed.
For all the times we hustle to elevate prospects that haven’t done much of anything inside the Octagon, it’s strange to me that an experienced, established 25-year-old like Allen continues to feel like an afterthought in the division to most.
And look — he might go out here this weekend and “shit the bed” again or he might just lose because Chris Curtis is an experienced veteran, riding high off a massive knockout at Madison Square Garden a month ago, looking to surge into the Top 15 with two quick, impressive victories.
But if Allen goes out and collects a third straight win, and looks good doing it, people have to start talking about him more as someone to watch in the middleweight division.