Arnold Allen Considers Damage Taken Major Factor Against Max Holloway: ‘His Mileage Will Catch Up’

Arnold Allen must break Max Holloway.

UFC Kansas City drops on April 15, 2023 and will see the 29-year-old Allen (19-1) attempt to secure his biggest victory yet. ‘Almighty’ will have to fend off rebounding former featherweight champion Holloway, who last fought in July 2022, suffering a third career loss to current titlist Alexander Volkanovski (watch highlights ).

Holloway apparently only got better with age, but that narrative changed in his Volkanovski trilogy. Regardless, Hawaii’s finest is still touted as one of the most feared fighters on the planet and what has made Holloway so much fun throughout his career is his willingness to make a show. For Allen, the Brit thinks it could end up costing ‘Blessed’ in their collision.

“It’s Max Holloway, he’s awesome,” Allen told Morning Kombat. “His mileage will catch up. It doesn’t matter how old you are. If you have 20 fights, when every fight is a 50-50 war… Even when he was very dominant, he took a lot of hits. Miles should add up.

“His skills are great, his skills are good, but that’s not it [cause] problem,” he added. “The mental war he is good at in the cage. Not even outside ’cause he ain’t like [Conor] Mc Gregor [who] would break people before like he did to [Jose] Aldo. He seems to do that in the cage. He does all his talking there, pisses you off, sort of throws you out of your game plan, and frustrates you. I think that’s what it’s good for. Not necessarily his skills, it’s his mental warfare and tenacity too, obviously.

Heading into Holloway’s latest loss to Volkanovski, he put in arguably his best performances of his career, beating Calvin Kattar and Yair Rodriguez one-sidedly en route to unanimous decisions. Rodriguez has since become the interim featherweight champion at UFC 284, submitting Josh Emmett with a second-round triangle choke (see highlights).

Although he missed the interim bout himself, Allen isn’t too shaken up by how things turned out.

“When they announced that Yair Rodriguez was fighting Josh Emmett, the only thing that would be better than not having an interim fight was to fight Max Holloway — to beat Max Holloway,” Allen said. “Obviously Max beat Yair in the last one so for me he’s a more believable place than beating Yair.”