Belal Muhammad spent Monday night on X doing something champions rarely bother with, which is arguing on behalf of a guy who isn’t his teammate, isn’t his opponent and isn’t in his division’s title picture. He was arguing for Brendan Allen, and the argument he picked was a sharp one.
It started with Chris Weidman. A clip posted by the UFC on Paramount account had the former middleweight champion puzzling over Allen’s place in line: “Why does he constantly win these big fights against guys who [are ranked lower] than him, and he never gets his big fight... What is he missing?”
Muhammad quoted it and reached for the most decorated name he could find. “Remember when they said the same thing about Islam and said he didn’t deserve a title shot … Islam fought for the title after fighting back 3 times in a row and never beating a top 5 guy,” he wrote.
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A fan, posting as @RGPFranco, pushed back with the obvious counter. Allen lost to Fluffy and Imavov, the fan wrote, and those two are the ones getting title consideration ahead of him, before adding that Allen is cool but he is NOT Islam. Muhammad answered a few hours later: “He lost close decisions to them then finished and a top 5 guy and top 10 guy in short notice fights after that.”
The losses are the evidence
Here’s where I land, and it’s mostly with Muhammad. The fan’s case treats Allen’s two losses as a closed file, as if losing to the men at the front of the line proves he belongs at the back of it. I read those same losses the other way. If you lose close decisions to the two fighters everyone agrees are next for the belt, you’ve told us exactly what tier you live in. A fighter who gets blown out by contenders is a gatekeeper. A fighter who goes the distance and makes the judges think about it is a contender who had a bad night at the margins.
And then look at what Allen did with the margins after that. By Muhammad’s account, he took two fights on short notice against a top-five opponent and a top-10 opponent and finished both of them. Short notice is where careful fighters say no. You don’t get a full camp, you don’t get to study tape for eight weeks, and you’re risking your ranking against someone who was preparing for a different night entirely. Allen kept saying yes and kept ending fights.
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The latest proof came Saturday at UFC Vegas 122, where he submitted Christian Leroy Duncan with a rear-naked choke in the fifth round. That detail matters to me more than the highlight does. A fifth-round finish means he was still hunting deep into a fight, still technical enough to take a back and lock a choke when most people are just trying to survive to the horn. UFC Brasil’s account captured the mood with a line in Portuguese, “Se não bater, vai dormir!!”, roughly that if you don’t tap, you’re going to sleep. Duncan’s night ended before that question got answered the hard way.
Where the Makhachev comparison bends
I’ll give the fan one thing. The Makhachev parallel isn’t perfect, and Muhammad’s own tweet shows why. His point about Islam is that the doubters complained about a run with no top-five win in it. Allen’s situation is close to the reverse. He does have the wins over highly ranked men, per Muhammad, and the knock on him is the two losses to the guys directly above him. So the cases rhyme more than they match. Both are fighters whose résumés invited a lazy reading, and in Makhachev’s case the lazy reading aged terribly.
That’s the useful part of the comparison. Rankings and title lines get built on vibes as much as on records, and fighters who win quietly, or win on short notice in fights nobody circled, get filed under “good, not great” long before anyone checks the math. Weidman, who held a belt himself, looked at Allen’s run and couldn’t find the missing piece. Neither can I.
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What Allen deserves next is a fight against someone at or near the top of the rankings, with a full camp, scheduled far enough out that nobody can call it a fluke or a favor. If the two men who beat him by decision are getting their title shots first, fine. Then give Allen whoever comes out of that line, or whoever is standing next to it. Making him prove himself against lower-ranked opponents again would be the one outcome that makes no sense at all.
Makhachev, for what it’s worth, is busy with his own future. Championship Rounds passed along a report credited to @KOlmeneroMMA that a Makhachev fight with Carlos Prates is being discussed for UFC 336 on January 30 in Toronto, which for now is talk and nothing signed. The man Muhammad used as his example has moved so far past his old doubters that he’s being penciled into pay-per-view slots in other countries. Allen just wants the phone call that says his next opponent is ranked above him.
