Toronto – UFC featherweight Arnold Allen has heard what his opponent Movsar Evloev has been saying about his takedown defense, and he had an answer as he prepares to face him at UFC 297.
“Maybe not in the wrestling. Most of the guys I’ve been fighting recently have been strikers so that is a bit skewed because they’re all strikers. (Max) Holloway’s not going to shoot a takedown. Calvin Kattar’s not really going to shoot a takedown. Dan Hooker’s not going to shoot a takedown,” Allen told Cageside Press on Wednesday.
“I think he’s basing it all off of one fight where I fought and I got taken down a bunch and controlled on the ground. He’s asked for me a lot and I’m pretty sure he’s seen that fight. I had pre-COVID in that fight, I was sick as a dog. I don’t want to make excuses, but it’s not excuse if I won the fight. I was gassed to f*ck, had no cardio, I got taken down and I figured I could lay on my ass until I could choke the guy out. And it worked out.”
That doesn’t mean that he isn’t taking Evloev very seriously. He knows who he is facing on Saturday.
“I think he’s a really good athlete, really good fighter, highly-talented, highly-skilled. Dangerous opponent. I can kind of relate to some of those feelings when I was coming up wanting to fight top guys, and no one wanted to give up their ranking spot to fight someone below them,” Allen said.
“There’s tougher fighters outside of that. Sometimes I look up like, ‘That guy’s ranked higher than me and he’s an easier fight than this one’. So it’s very easy to be number 3 and be like ‘I’m only fighting 2 or 1’. Everyone does that. It sucks. It don’t mean anything unless you’re number 1.”
Watch the entire media day scrum with Arnold Allen above. He takes on Movsar Evloev at UFC 297.
