For all intents and purposes, Arnold Allen performed well in his first five-round fight.
It just wasn’t well enough to get the win, as the Englishman dropped a five-round verdict to ex-featherweight champ Max Holloway in the UFC on ESPN 44 headliner at the T-Mobile Center in Kansas City, Missouri on Saturday night. UFC president Dana White came away impressed with Allen’s performance but would have liked a little more urgency from “Almighty” down the stretch.
“I thought he looked good,” White said. “He kept the pace, kept the distance, controlled the tempo of the fight. I thought that Allen looked incredible. If you think about it, it’s his first big night ever in a main event, the whole crowd’s against him and he came on too late.
“If he’d have fought the way [he fought] in the fifth round [from] the third round on, he would have had a better chance of winning that fight. I’m not a cornerman or a coach, but I think there should have been a sense of urgency earlier. But I’m not a cornerman.”
Knowing he was well behind on the scorecards, Allen did some of his best work in the fifth round, but it wasn’t enough to produce a finish. With that, his 10-fight UFC winning streak is a thing of the past. There is plenty for Allen to build upon, however.
“Young guy, up-and-coming, gets ranked in the Top 5 and he’s the main event in a place where the entire crowd is cheering against him,” White said. “It’s a lot of pressure for a guy. I thought he handled it well. He’s obviously talented enough. He went five rounds with Max Holloway, one of the best ever.
“I think he poured it on a little too late but I’m not his cornerman. I think there were a lot of mistakes made tonight in the corner,” White continued. “Obviously, he’s got that experience under his belt now and they’ve got to go back and figure out what went wrong and what was broken, and fix it and come back. He’s a talented kid.”
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