Brendan Allen has to respect young fighters like Damian Pinas calling their shot to fight him, but he believes more work needs to be done.<\/p>\n
Allen is set to face Christian Leroy Duncan in the main event of UFC Vegas 122 this Saturday at the Meta APEX in Las Vegas. Following his quick knockout win at UFC 332 against Andrey Pulyaev, Pinas called Allen out.<\/p>\n
Ahead of his big middleweight headliner, Allen responded.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe knew it was going to come one day as long as I kept doing my thing,\u201d Allen told MMA Fighting. \u201cI mean, hey, hats off to them, but also you have to think of the position that they\u2019re in. It\u2019s a win-win for them. They fight, they get experience to fight someone like me. I\u2019m the guy that\u2019s been fighting down. Nobody else is fighting down like me. No one else is top 5 in the world fighting out of the rankings, so.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s where my name pops off to the hat. They\u2019re like, \u2018Oh, if I talk to this guy, then I can probably get this fight.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not the first time Allen has been called out by the newer generation of middleweights, and \u2014 as he\u2019s very well aware \u2014 it will be far from the last. Allen enters Saturday\u2019s matchup on a three-fight win streak and in the championship picture, while Pinas is 3-0 in the UFC, which includes wins against Cesar Almeida and Wes Schultz.<\/p>\n
Allen understands the callouts, and even has heard that the callouts from fighters such as Pinas make him upset \u2014 which to Allen is laughable.<\/p>\n
\u201cMultiple guys say like, \u2018Oh, he gets mad,\u2019 or how can you tell if someone gets mad on Instagram?,\u201d Allen explained. \u201cI\u2019m calling you bro, you can\u2019t get me mad. Like I said, hats off to those guys, but they\u2019re three fights in. I remember when I was three fights in. I think, for me, I was young and I was trying to reach for the stars every now and then, but I tried to keep it in perspective of what I could realistically get. Obviously, to the media, you call out big, you shoot for the stars, get your name going, show that you\u2019re ready, but behind closed doors, you just kind of get what you get.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut again, I never had any star power, so I don\u2019t know how some of these guys are, and maybe they get to have that discussion, but at the end of the day, guys like him, he\u2019s just a young guy, man. He\u2019s still got a lot to prove. He fought bottom of the barrel guys and think that they can just shoot for the stars eventually just because they get a couple of wins against the low level guys. But it is what it is. That\u2019s just part of the game.\u201d<\/p>\n
Allen fully accepts he\u2019s not the most over guy with the fan base. It\u2019s a part of his journey and story to get to where he wants to go \u2014 a fully earned it type of career. So he feels that the up and coming fighters don\u2019t need any extra help, although, they might be getting it from the big names calling the fights.<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean, it doesn\u2019t help that commentary plays into it and [they] say the things that they say,\u201d Allen said. \u201cThat helps them, but again, it is what it is. I\u2019m kind of getting to that point where it\u2019s like, before it would piss me off if someone said my name. I\u2019m like, \u2018Oh, all right, I\u2019m going to show you. You think you can beat me, I\u2019m going to show you.\u2019 Now I\u2019m kind of at that point in my life, in my career to where it\u2019s like, \u2018Oh, I appreciate the compliment. I appreciate it, but you ain\u2019t getting this. You got to earn it.\u2019 To me, you\u2019ve got to earn it.<\/p>\n
`That\u2019s my problem with the young guys and like I said, these young guys just, they\u2019re reaching, man. They\u2019re reaching and hats off to him, that\u2019s what you kind of got to do now to make a name for yourself. But that reach is way out of perspective. So, hey, they earn it, and I\u2019m still here. Any of them can get it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Brendan Allen has to respect young fighters like Damian Pinas calling their shot to fight him, but he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":923302,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,1347,785,85,787,1396],"class_list":["post-923301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-latest-news","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-ufc","tag-ufc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/923301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=923301"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/923301\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/923302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=923301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=923301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=923301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}