Try as I might, I can’t quite pin down Arnold Allen.
I know where he is, to be clear: as we speak via video call, Allen in a rented residence in Las Vegas, a day after completing the journey from his home in Suffolk. But in trying to get to the heart of who the UFC’s No 7 featherweight is, I find him reliably elusive.
I suppose I might be missing the point. Allen, one of British MMA’s top talents, is generally shy, rarely loquacious. So when these attributes come across in conversation, maybe I am scraping his core.
Perhaps I’m greedy in wanting more; perhaps the journalist in me has a misguided sense of success and failure in the endeavour of getting to know a subject. You want them to open up, so when Allen begins to shut down towards the end of our chat, I feel like I’m bothering him – and on the eve of a dangerous main event against Melquizael Costa, no less.
In fairness, Allen is friendly and thoughtful for a chunk of the discussion, and even when his answers become briefer, he’s never rude. Furthermore, four days out from his fight, near the end of a weight-cut, it’s understandable that he might be low on energy or keen to return to resting or training.
Still, I find him fairly buoyant in our early exchanges. “I’ve been eating good,” he says. “I did a three-day carb load, so I’ve eaten pancakes, bison burgers, a cinnamon bun, a burrito. I work with the best!
“You can’t cut corners eight to 10 weeks out, that’s where the problems will lie. Not every has that discipline, or maybe you train like a madman and need more calories and carbs to recover. But I think, ultimately, it boils down to discipline. Even some of the hardest workers don’t...
“Khabib [Nurmagomedov] talks discipline, [but] that dude missed weight by eating tiramisu! I’ve seen some of his speeches about discipline, and famously the tiramisu Tuesday... I’m not s***ing on Khabib by any means – he’s one of the greats – but you can be disciplined in showing your face in training, but the diet... Tiramisu is tiramisu.”
Allen is laughing. Jovial, dare I say. It feels an opportune time to bring up someone else who has undertaken the mission of distilling Allen’s essence: Fraser Harrop.
An award-winning director, Harrop is working on a documentary on Allen, due for release in summer or autumn. As such, he was recently in touch with me to chat about the 32-year-old.
How has it been, I ask Allen, to be studied so intensely, as if under a microscope?
“It’s a bit of a pain in the ass, to be honest,” Allen deadpans, though his tone betrays his subtle sense of humour. “I really like Fraser, he’s a lovely guy, but... sometimes you just want to come home; you walk in your house, and he’s like: ‘Right, can we do that again? Get the lighting right.’ I’m like: ‘Mate! Leave me alone, you b*****d.’
“But nah, it’s good. I don’t really think [into] things too much, then he’ll ask me questions and I’m like: ‘I dunno, I’ve never really thought about that.’ He’s like: ‘What do you mean??’ But it’s interesting. I’m looking forward to seeing the final product.”
So far, so good. I hint to Allen that Harrop and I share a sense of curiosity. “As outsiders, we really analyse the mindset of a fighter,” I say. “There are certain things we wonder about, whereas you’ve done it for so long that – I imagine – they’re second nature to you, so you’ve never really thought about them.”
“Yeah, yeah, probably so,” Allen says. “That makes sense.” By the end, he’s verging on a mumble. For whatever reason, I see this as a turning point. And there are other brief answers to come.
After zero fights for Allen (20-4) in 2025, it will be encouraging to see him compete twice in the span of five months (Allen lost a narrow decision to Jean Silva in January). I put this to him with enthusiasm, and he acknowledges that he’s glad to be active, but that’s about it.
What about that moment late in his bout with Silva, when the Brazilian “surfed” on the back of a turtled-up Allen? It spawned memes but felt disrespectful, I admit. “I’ll be honest, I didn’t really give a s***,” he says. “I was more like, ‘What the f*** is he doing?’” There’s a half-laugh from Allen, and that’s that.
Thankfully, he gets a kind of second wind when I ask about fear. Silva had looked scary in his recent performances, as has Costa.
“I mean, everyone is dangerous in the UFC,” Allen starts. “Everyone can hurt you, everyone has knocked people out. You know what’s really scary? The guy that hasn’t hurt anyone, that has ‘pillow fists’; you don’t want to get hurt by that guy, because that sucks! More scary is getting f***ing worked by Max Holloway for five rounds, after what he did against Calvin [Kattar].”
Allen is referencing his commendable performance in a 2023 loss to Holloway, after the former champ landed an all-time record number of strikes on Kattar in 2021.
Curiously, I was at Holloway vs Allen as part of a 12-hour visit to Kansas City, of all places. Allen seems uninterested. “Yeah, it was a good fight,” is all he says. Increasingly, his gaze has begun to drift away from his phone camera.
Sensing I’ve gotten all I can out of Allen, I wrap up the interview by asking if he still feels close to a title shot. “Yeah, I think so.”
Maybe I’m being hard on myself, but I don’t feel any closer to finding Arnold Allen.
UFC Fight Night: Allen vs Costa will take place on Saturday 16 May. It will stream live on TNT Sports in the UK and is also accessible via HBO Max, EE TV, Virgin Media, Amazon Prime Video, and Sky Sports.
