When you ask a fighter about a guy he used to be tight with, you usually get the media-training shrug. Something about respecting everybody, wishing him well, hope it’s a good fight. Brendan Allen skipped the shrug. According to MiddleEasy, he picked Joe Pyfer to stop Bo Nickal and then talked openly about the friendship fallout between himself and Pyfer, including the private conversations that led to the split.
Read that order again. He’s on the outs with Pyfer, and he still took Pyfer to win. That’s the most honest thing anybody at 185 has said this month, and it’s also the smartest career move available to a guy who keeps winning and keeps getting nothing for it.
The pick is the headline
Picking against the guy you fell out with is the easiest content in this sport. Nobody would blink if Allen said Nickal wins and Pyfer gets what’s coming. Fans love a petty prediction, and I love a petty prediction. Allen went the other way, which tells you he’s grading the fight on what he believes will happen inside the cage and leaving the personal stuff out of it.
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That makes his pick worth more than the average fighter-on-fighter forecast. A prediction from somebody with every emotional reason to root against Pyfer, who picks him anyway, carries more weight than a pick from Pyfer’s training partner or Nickal’s hype man. Allen has nothing to gain by flattering Pyfer, so when he says Pyfer gets the stoppage, you can take it at face value.
The fallout, with the receipts held back
Here’s where Allen earns some credit from me. I can’t stand manufactured beef that collapses the second two guys stand nose to nose at a face-off. This is the reverse of that. MiddleEasy notes Allen qualified his account of the private fight discussions, meaning he put limits on his own version of events instead of blowing it up into a soap opera.
That restraint matters. Plenty of fighters would take a broken friendship, add three fake details and a villain arc, and ride it for clicks. Allen explained the rift, hedged where he wasn’t speaking for both sides, and then turned around and picked Pyfer anyway. If you were waiting for a screenshot war, this ain’t it. What you got instead is a guy who sounds like he’s still a little bothered but isn’t going to lie about who he thinks hits harder on fight night.
Why Allen needs this fight in his mouth
Now the cynical (and correct) read. Allen is talking about a fight he isn’t in because the fights he wants aren’t coming to him fast enough.
He just headlined UFC Vegas 122 at the Meta APEX on October 10 and submitted Christian Leroy Duncan with a fifth-round rear-naked choke. That was his fourth straight win, and it snapped Duncan’s five-fight win streak in Duncan’s first UFC main event. It wasn’t pretty for long stretches. Duncan poked him in the eye in the second round, and Marc Goddard docked a point after warning Duncan in Round 1 and again between rounds about his fingers. Allen also looked stuck in first gear at times, and teammate Belal Muhammad later revealed on X why: Allen had been dealing with a staph infection since Tuesday of fight week and fought on antibiotics, with five days still left on them afterward.
“That’s the heart of a champion,” Muhammad wrote.
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And yet. Chris Weidman, speaking on a UFC on Paramount clip, asked the question every Allen fan has been yelling into the void: “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 fired back on X by comparing Allen’s situation to Islam Makhachev’s, writing, “Remember when they said the same thing about Islam and said he didn’t deserve a title shot.” A day later he went all in: “My brother Brendan Allen is the next 185 champion! I believe it!”
So Allen has a teammate campaigning for him, a former champ wondering aloud why the UFC keeps feeding him guys below him, and a post-fight callout of former champion Dricus du Plessis sitting out there with no answer. In that spot, the worst thing you can be is quiet. Weighing in on Pyfer vs. Nickal, with a personal history attached, puts Allen’s name in every preview of a fight that has real eyeballs on it. That’s free promotion, and he got it without inventing anything.
My take
Allen calling a Pyfer knockout is a bolder statement than any du Plessis callout, because if Pyfer delivers, Allen looks like the sharpest guy in the division and the bigger man in a feud he didn’t have to be gracious about. If Nickal wins, Allen eats some crow about a guy he isn’t even friends with anymore. That’s a real bet with real downside, and I respect anybody who calls a shot that can blow up in his face.
He also did it while still working through five days of antibiotics. The UFC keeps asking Allen to prove he belongs. He keeps proving it, and now he’s doing the matchmakers’ promotional work for them too. Book him against du Plessis.
