Interviews

Published on March 15th, 2020 | by Percy Crawford

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Brendan Allen Impressive in UFC Fight Night 169 TKO Win!

Brendan Allen extended his win streak to 6 after becoming the first fighter to stop Tom Breese at UFC FN 169.

UFC middleweight, Brendan Allen showcased his ground skills and eventually forced referee, Bill Bookwalter, to step in and halt the action 4:47 seconds into the first round. Allen became the first fighter to stop Tom Breese in 12-fights. After a failed takedown attempt by Breese in which, Allen reversed position and ended up on top. Allen let his fists and elbows fly. After several unanswered punches, the referee had no choice but to step in and stop the fight. Improving Allen’s record to 14-3 with 5 wins coming by way of TKO, 8 submissions and 1 decision.

During my phone conversation with, Allen, he opens up about the big win, talks about the effects the Corona Virus is having on these events and discusses his future plans.

Congratulations on the becoming the first fighter to stop Tom Breese. You did so in the first round. How do you feel about your performance?

Brendan Allen: Thank you! I feel pretty good about it. There wasn’t anything that I could really take away and be like, “I should have done this different; I should have done different.” Although, I wish we would’ve stood more, it is what it is. I’m just happy to go out there and not really get touched. Now I get to heal from the fight camp. There are a couple of things that I need to look at. Just a couple of things from the fight camp and the fight really that I need to take care of. And now figuring out what we’re going to do about everything being held up with this lil virus deal or whatever. So, we’ll see what happens. Overall, I feel really good about the fight and on to the next one.

You wanted to stand more, were you surprised by his approach?

Brendan Allen: I didn’t really think too much into the fight. I was just ready to adapt. Since he was out for so long and me being so active, I figured that I couldn’t focus too much on one thing. I couldn’t say, “Oh, he’s probably going to do this or that,” because I really didn’t know with him being out and not knowing what he’s worked on. I know the guy didn’t stop training. I didn’t want to think too much into it and kind of screw myself mentally if something didn’t go the way that I thought it would. I was just ready to adapt. Looking back on fights, I guess at this point, I’m never surprised when I touch somebody, and they shoot. Whatever the case may be. I’m used to going to the ground. I’m good with that. I’ve been doing Jiu Jitsu for a long time, I’ve been training for a long time, so that’s kind of my comfortable place to be anyways. If someone initiates the clinch or trying to grapple, I’m 100% for it and we’ll see what happens.

Him being out for so long, did that help you because there was no recent footage to dissect which allowed you to just get into the flow of the fight and made adjustments to what he was doing in the cage?

Brendan Allen: I think its kind of helped me ever since I fought Jon Kirk. I really prepared for something. I was a lot younger mentally and obviously in age. I really prepared for him to come out orthodox. I prepared for this and prepared for that and he came out southpaw. On the way trotting over to him, he was southpaw and it threw me off so bad. I don’t know. It messed me up mentally. It made me look bad standing. I still won the fight, but since that fight, I really don’t focus too much on them and what they’re doing. Yeah, I do study to see tendencies, but ultimately, I try just to fight my fight, focus on myself and be ready to adapt. That’s what a fight is.

Did you intend to jump on him early because of his layoff and just see if there was any rust there or maybe his gas tank wasn’t up to par yet?

Brendan Allen: I’m going to walk up to you no matter what. I don’t care if we think your cardio is trash or whatever the case may be. I’m going to walk right to you right off the bat. As soon as that bell rings, I’m coming right to you. Grant it, my coach thought he would come out kind of hard which he did. He was right on the money. We thought he wanted to prove something in which he got right to it. Which I’m good with. I’m down with that 100%. I’d much rather that than him run from me the whole night which was what I was expecting from his tendencies in his videos. I was going to come out and get right in his face and get right to it. I come to fight; especially fight night. There is kind of that flip of the switch that takes place. I was coming to fight and that’s what I’m doing every time. I’m willing to go out on my shield if I have to. I’m not going to sit there and run or anything like that. So, that’s just me.

You looked very comfortable on the ground. As you were hitting him with ground and pound, did you sense the end was near because it didn’t appear you were trying to preserve your energy?

Brendan Allen: When we first hit the ground, I kind of wanted to solidify position to kind of feel where his hips were going and feel what he was looking for. It was more of a feeling process for me. Honestly, that’s why I always… my opinion is I always finish in the second because the whole first round to me is kind of calculating everything and taking things in. And that’s why I put myself in bad position in some of my fights. But I’ll get out. At the end, I hit him with one clean 2 right through his guard. Once I landed that, I hit him with an elbow right afterwards. When I threw the elbow, he didn’t move. He just kind of stayed there. So, I kept hitting and it got harder and faster. I started unloading because the ref told us in the back when they were going over all the rules and stuff, that if you take a couple of unanswered shots, 4-5-6, he said he’s going to be talking to us the whole time, but depending on how hard and stuff like that, once you get to about 6, he’s going to stop the fight.

I heard, but I don’t really care, some people were saying it was an ugly stoppage, but they were all from his area. He wasn’t protesting. It wasn’t early to me. It doesn’t matter, man. He wasn’t going to do nothing. He was going to stay right there. He was a good dude, nice guy and it’s just a job. One of us had to win and one of us had to lose and I was lucky enough to get the win in a good fashion, so I’m good.

Fighters say the UFC jitters are real. Did you have any in this fight or do you feel like you got them out of your system already?

Brendan Allen: No man. I didn’t feel the jitters in my first fight with Kevin [Holland]. I don’t know, man. It’s kind of weird and hard to put a word on it, but it doesn’t bother me anymore. I focused on the hype and what everyone would think and trying to be this specimen and things like that when I was younger. Now, as I get older, I don’t care. I don’t care what people say. I don’t care if a thousand people like me or a thousand people hate me. It’s part of the sport and yeah, it’s great if you got that clout and that following, but honestly, I don’t really care. I’m still getting paid; I’m still enjoying what I’m doing and I’m still providing for my family. Ultimately, none of that matters to me.

It’s still a fight and I’m still trying to fight that man. the feeling of, I’m about to go fight a guy and he wants to hurt me. Those feelings and emotions that comes with that are still there every time. Sometimes it gets a little worse and sometimes it gets a little better, but they’re there. I personally never felt the UFC jitters. It was just another fight. I’m about to go fight a man and it is what it is now. Let’s see what happens because fight week, especially after I made weight, everything is done. The fights going to be what it’s going to be. I can’t change anything. The only thing that I can control is my preparation. I can’t control anything fight night. That’s the way I look at it and that’s how I feel about it. I’m just ready at that point to go fight and see what happens.

Is there anyone in particular who you would like to test your skills against next and when?

Brendan Allen: I always have opponents and timelines in mind. Sometimes my ideas don’t coincide with my managers sometimes. I don’t know. I guess that’s just the competitor in me. I want to do better. But yeah, I’d like to fight… my first goal is to try to fight my losses. So, hopefully I will fight, Trevin Giles. If not, I don’t know. They don’t want me to fight a top 15 guy right now. It’s smarter financially to wait. But I’m that guy that is going to fight better with the better guys. I want to fight, Carlos Jr. if possible. I don’t know. I never really get the fights that I want, so at this point, I don’t really care, I guess. I’m going to fight whoever they tell me to fight. But hopefully I fight on that Austin card on June 27th or International Fight Week. Those are my two that I really hope to get. If I can’t get the opponent, then hopefully I can get the date.

Is it difficult getting motivated to go train right now because of the uncertainty?

Brendan Allen: My whole outlook on the whole Corona thing is, it’s more media than anything. When they compare everything to other illnesses such as the flu, the flu is way worse. But it is affecting things. I’m supposed to go to Vegas to do some tests and now it may not happen because of all of this. If you look at the NBA and other sporting events, it may happen where they cancel our events. If they cancel events, those guys that are booked for that event are going to be pushed back and then they are first in line for a later event. Ultimately, that will push guys like me that just fought back even further which I do not want. It’s just kind of wait and see. In terms of training, I’m not really doing much right now anyways. I have a 30-day suspension. And then I always take a week or two off. I have a lot of stuff around my house that I need to get done after being away for 2-months. I focus on that and just let my body heal. And now, spending time with my daughter is more important than training for the first week or two. I’ll be back to running and everything that I can do next week. But for these last 2 weeks I’ve been happy to be home, hanging out with my family and trying to get as much of this crap done at my house that needs to be done that haven’t been done.

It’s great having Daniel Cormier and Dustin Poirier to represent Louisiana in the UFC, but they are north Louisiana. To have someone right here in St. Tammany Parish representing the sport, that has to be a good feeling to you because it is to us.

Brendan Allen: It’s great, man. Trying to do something to show these kids coming up that… everyone always says that everyone can do anything and anything is possible if you put your mind to it, but how do you really know if success is real if no one that looks like you, acts like you does it? It’s hard. So, I see success as motivation. Seeing friends of mine succeed helps me. I don’t have many people that I look up to other than my father and my brother, but even if that was the case, just seeing them succeed is motivation to me. It’s nice to go out there and do something good for a change. There’s not too many eyes on good anymore. It’s nice to do something like that.

Ultimately, I don’t feel any different than anyone else. It’s just a job to me. I’m okay at it, but I’m just another person. I’m just a husband to my wife, a father to my daughter and an uncle to my niece. There’s nothing special about me. I don’t do anything. I’m kind of a nomad in terms of where I’ve lived because we’ve moved so much. I try to represent a lot of different areas. I’m here right now at my house. I train in Slidell. I try to represent a lot of different places and a lot of different people. At the end of the day, I’m just another guy.

Keep representing us well, good luck and I hope to see you back inside of the Octagon again soon. Is there anything else you want to say?

Brendan Allen: I just want to tell everyone thank you for supporting me, thanks for looking out for me and I appreciate all the support. It really helps and it means a lot. They can follow me on Instagram. We will be doing giveaways once a week for the month of March. We just finished out first one. b_allen185 on Instagram and that’s where we will be doing the next few weeks of giveaways. We got some supplement samples that we will be giving and one vile of Terphouse. So, follow me, I’ll be on there trying to interact with the fans more and just try and give back as much as I can.



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