Brendan Allen had his answer ready before anyone finished asking the question. Minutes after submitting Christian Leroy Duncan in the fifth round at UFC Vegas 122 on Saturday, Allen used his post-fight Octagon interview to call for Dricus du Plessis, MiddleEasy reported, framing the fight as his road into title contention.
The finish was a rear-naked choke, according to a clip Bovada posted on X under the caption “BRENDAN ALLEN REAR NAKED CHOKE TO DEFEAT CLD.” Within minutes, MMA account Dovy asked “who should Brendan Allen fight next???” Allen had already pointed at a former champion.
This was no gimme. Duncan came in riding five straight wins, and Championship Rounds gave Allen a 52% chance before the bout, about as close to a coin flip as a main-event-length fight gets. Before the cage door closed, Jed Meshew captured the mood with a joke on X: “First UFC fight in history with five first names.” Allen dragged the fight into its last round and closed it there.
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Allen’s path to this point runs through the regional South. He started Brazilian jiu-jitsu at 13 after watching a class with his older brother, won the Legacy Fighting Alliance middleweight title twice, then earned his UFC contract by submitting Aaron Jeffery in the first round on Dana White’s Contender Series in July 2019. He submitted Kevin Holland in his UFC debut that October. Knockout Daily’s rankings, which list his previous fight as June 6, have him at No. 11 at middleweight with a 27-7 record. The Meta UFC rankings had him at No. 5 as of Aug. 29.
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Du Plessis sits at No. 4 in our rankings with a 24-3 record. He’s a former UFC middleweight champion and the first South African to win a UFC title, and he last fought on July 18. He also has a long history of finishing people on the mat, with guillotines and rear-naked chokes running through his Extreme Fighting Championship run in South Africa. Allen is betting that a grappler’s fight against a former champ makes sense to matchmakers.
The ask is ambitious from No. 11, but the timing is reasonable. Du Plessis is three months removed from his last outing, and Allen just beat a man nobody had solved in five fights. For a kid from Louisiana who found jiu-jitsu by tagging along to his brother’s class, a fifth-round choke is a strong case to put in front of the matchmakers.
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