Vancouver – Perhaps surprisingly to many considering he took the fight on short notice in place of Anthony “Fluffy” Hernandez, Brendan Allen got the job done in the main event of UFC Vancouver, leaving Reinier de Ridder unable to continue after four rounds.
Allen (26-7) suspected such an ending was in store, as De Ridder had been defeated in similar fashion during his ONE Championship days.
“You can see it when he fought the Russian for the second time in ONE,” Allen told media including Cageside Press after UFC Vancouver, referring to RDR’s rematch with Anatoly Malykhin in March last year. “He did the same thing, I think the third or fourth round is the same.”
“25 minutes is a very, very long time to take punishment. And I didn’t think he could do that. He took a lap longer than I thought, but I didn’t start too hot in the first either. So three rounds of dominance.”
Allen’s slow start got him taken down and fended off a rear-naked choke; When asked what might have prompted it, Allen pointed to the short-term nature of the five-round fight. “Five rounds, three and a half weeks of training.”
Allen called out the likes of middleweight champion Khamzat Chimaev and Dricus Du Plessis after the win, his second straight. With Nassourdine Imavov and Anthony Hernandez almost certainly ahead of ‘All In’, however, it remains to be seen what comes next.
What he certainly hopes for is to conquer De Ridder’s rankings. “We know how these politics work, for some reason they don’t like me. So I’ll probably be six, seven. But look at my biography, that son of a bitch is going to say #4 here in a few minutes. So for me, I’m #4 in the world. I beat #4, I’m #4. They did that to me after I beat Andre Muniz. No, not again.”
Watch the full UFC Vancouver post-fight press conference with Brendan Allen above.
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