“It’s just another fight. I’ve just got to go out there, do what I can do, and get the W. That’s all it is, another fight,” Brendan Allen said this week regarding his middleweight match-up with Ian Heinish at UFC Vegas 13.
The pair face off this Saturday night, but the fight was originally booked back in the summer. Heinisch was forced to pull out. Allen wound up fighting replacement Kyle Daukaus, earning a unanimous decision.
Even before that, however, some bad blood had bubbled to the surface between the former LFA standouts (both men wore gold in the promotion).
“It doesn’t really matter right now,” said Allen, who added that he was focused solely on the task at hand. And when it came time to prepare of the fight, he didn’t concern himself with thoughts of Heinisch dropping out again. “I always focus on myself. I don’t really care about what my opponent’s doing, I can’t control what they’re doing. I can only control what I’m doing, I can only control my preparation.”
But at the end of the day, yes, there’s a little bit of an emotional undercurrent with this match-up. Ahead of the bout, Heinisch told Sherdog that he believed Allen was scared of him. In the process, he claimed that Allen had avoided even looking at him while the pair were both training at the UFC Performance Institute.
Of course, they both fight for a living. Allen has signed the contract to fight Heinisch twice. Putting the notion of anyone being scared in question.
“Whatever he has to tell himself to sleep at night, get to the fight. Whoever he has to put around him to put words in his head. It makes no difference,” Allen told Cageside Press during this week’s UFC Vegas 13 media day. “I’m not scared of a man on this planet whatsoever. The only man I was scared of was my father, and I’m not scared of him, I have the utmost respect for him.”
“I’m scared of no man on this planet,” Allen reiterated. “I don’t care what he thinks, I don’t care what he says. I don’t care. I’m just here for me, I’m here to get my check, go home to my girls and my family. That’s all that matters.”
Watch the full UFC Vegas 13 virtual media day press scrum with Brendan Allen above. The card takes place Saturday, November 7 at the UFC Apex in Las Vegas, Nevada.
