Brendan Allen wants to finally settle up with Dricus du Plessis.
On Saturday, Allen won his fourth consecutive fight in the UFC, finishing Christian Leroy Duncan with a rear-naked choke in the fifth round of their UFC Vegas 122 main event. It was the second fight in a row that Allen, currently No. 4 in the UFC’s middleweight rankings, has had to fight backward and defend his position, and after the win, he made it clear he’d like to square off with former middleweight champion Dricus du Plessis.
“Yeah, if he drops his nuts,” Allen said at the post-fight press conference when asked about fighting du Plessis. “It’s just all talk from his side all the time. I’ve been waiting to sign the contract, and I see everyone just talking shit like, ‘Oh, I’m just calling out DDP.’ But he’s the only one that makes sense, number one, and two, we’ve had our differences. And three, we’re supposed to have been agreed to fight before, so it’s not like it’s unreasonable. …
“But I’m not chasing that motherf*cker. If he wants to fight, then fight. If not, we’ll figure something else out. I know Hunter [Campbell] will have a plan for me, and we’ll see what it is. But hopefully, after tonight, we have some options on the table where I can sit and wait for something bigger, if need be. But who knows?”
Allen has been lobbying for a fight with du Plessis for some time, though it’s never come to fruition. Instead, the former middleweight champion faced former welterweight champion Kamaru Usman in the main event of UFC Oklahoma City in July. That matchmaking showed Allen that du Plessis isn’t interested in fighting him, and he once again lambasted “Stillknocks” for fighting an aging welterweight instead of him.
“Most of those guys don’t want to fight. They don’t want to really be challenged,” Allen said of the middleweight top five. “I think we see that with the matchups that they get. Like Dricus. He fought Kamaru. Everyone’s hyping up Kamaru because his résumé; yes, he has a great résumé. He is one of the best to ever do it at welterweight, off of his accolades. That’s true. But we’re not there anymore! We’re very far past that, and Father Time will get every one of us if we stay in this game long enough.
“So, yeah, he was an easier fight than me. There’s no question in that. You can say what you want, you can think what you want; I’m younger, I’m hungrier, I’m bigger, I’m faster, I’m stronger. I’m just to just as experienced. He’s got more title fights, but the amount of fights I’ve got is probably close. I’m tough. I think I’m technically better, but that’s just my opinion. But either way, no matter what, no matter how you cut it, at this point in time, or at that point in time, I was the harder fight. No doubt about it. So he took the easier fight. He knows it, I know it, everyone else knows it.”
