Brendan Allen is not too impressed with the body of work from UFC middleweight champion Dricus Du Plessis.
Despite currently holding gold at 185 pounds, being undefeated in the octagon and finishing several known names, Allen doesn’t see Du Plessis as the rightful champ of the division. Allen believes Du Plessis has hit a run of good luck all the way to the belt, and although the results might not paint the picture, he said that one can see it in Du Plessis’ actual performances.
“Did Whittaker look like the normal Whittaker in that fight? I mean, he was getting beat in that first minute-and-a-half of that fight,” Allen told MMA Junkie Radio when talking about Du Plessis resume. “Whittaker didn’t look as bouncy as he normally does. He didn’t look as quick as he normally does. He looked flatfooted and stiff. It is a win. You’re definitely right that that’s a great name to have on your resume. You can’t take the win away; he got that one for sure. But up until that point, we can definitely, easily, 1,000 percent fact say that he had the easy road, and he was losing every single one of those fights until he came back and got the finish.
“Some of those were lucky. Marcus Perez, (Du Plessis) was losing that fight, and (Perez) was beating him so easily that he threw a spinning back elbow at the same time that (Dricus) was throwing a body shot and hit him in the chin. I don’t think it gets any more lucky than that.”
Allen returns to the cage April 6 in the main event of a UFC Fight Night scheduled to take place at the UFC Apex in Las Vegas. He takes on longtime contender Marvin Vettori in a key middleweight matchup. He believes that if he beats Vettori, the UFC should give him a title shot or, at the very least, a No. 1 contender fight.
The bout with Vettori is the third main event booking Allen gets in the UFC. He’s now feeling very comfortable preparing for 25 minutes and doesn’t see it as a future challenge if he got a shot a Du Plessis.
“I always train to go and go and go,” Allen said. “I don’t know any way but to train 100 percent. That’s why it’s nice for me to take a couple of months off in between camps, just because when I do train, I don’t know any other way than to push myself. I’ve done five rounds before, a different stage, but still preparing for five rounds. So it’s nothing new. Things just change in preparation from three to five. You can be a little more lazy on three, where you can’t with five. You add some different running routines in there, you add a couple more rounds, but overall the push for me, it’s still the same.”
