This past Saturday night in the headliner of UFC Vegas 70, we saw a surprising middleweight contest. It wasn’t surprising in the sense that the matchup wasn’t supposed to take place, it was surprising because this wasn’t the main event when the night started.
Nikita Krylov got sick the night of the fights and as a result, the headliner with Ryan Spann was cancelled. As a result, Brendan Allen (21-5) and Andre Muniz (23-5) moved into the main event slot after originally being in the co-main event.
This was an important fight for both contenders. Brendan Allen was looking to take his winning streak to four fights while Andre Muniz was looking to remain unbeaten inside the octagon. Andre Muniz is one of the best grapplers in the promotion and even holds a submission win over Jacare Souza.
With that in mind, many thought Brendan Allen would be overmatched on the ground despite being a great grappler himself. Hell, that’s what I thought and I predicted a Muniz win. Boy, was I and a lot of others wrong. It was competitive through two rounds, but Allen was getting the better of a lot of grappling exchanges.
In the final round, he was able to get Muniz’s back. When he got there, he was able to lock in a choke and get the surprise submission win at UFC Vegas 70. The odds of Allen winning by submission were +900 when the fight began.
Who is next after UFC Vegas 70?
This was a huge win and moment for Brendan Allen. Allen has had a couple of setbacks since making his debut with the promotion. Most notably his TKO losses against Sean Strickland and Chris Curtis. However, he continued to get better and now he looks better than ever.
After this huge win, he had a few names on his mind. He called out both guys who have defeated him in the past as well as a couple of others. Jack Hermansson was one of the guys he called out and honestly that fight makes a lot of sense to me.
Muniz was ranked 11th before the fight on Saturday. Allen is likely going to jump into that spot. All the guys he called out are right in that range so I think it makes a lot of sense. However, if I’m booking, I think the Hermansson bout is fresh and just makes the most sense for the UFC.