Dana White used his UFC 332 post-fight press conference in Salt Lake City to inform the public that “the so-called experts in the sport don’t know anything about fighting.” Fair enough. I’ve been wrong out loud more often than anybody who still draws a paycheck in this business, so treat what follows accordingly, and then go do something irresponsible with it anyway.
UFC Fight Night: Allen vs. Duncan goes Saturday, Oct. 10 at the Meta APEX in Las Vegas, with the card starting at 21:00 GMT (5 p.m. ET). It’s 12 fights with a middleweight five-rounder on top. My sheet this week is the official card and the records on it. I don’t have a board of odds open, so there’s no line movement story to tell you. Everything below runs on arithmetic, which suits me fine, because arithmetic has never once cut a promo at media day.
Main event: Brendan Allen (27-7) vs. Christian Leroy Duncan (15-2)
Start with the number that jumps off the page. Allen has 34 professional fights. Duncan has 17. That’s exactly double, and in a fight scheduled for 25 minutes I think that gap does most of the heavy lifting.
The case for Duncan is his record, and it’s a good one. Fifteen wins against two losses works out to an 88% win rate, which is cleaner than Allen’s 79%. If you only read the right-hand column, you’d take the Englishman’s name off the card and say he’s the better bet. The catch is sample size. Duncan’s percentage lives on 17 fights, so a single loss Saturday drops him to 83% and changes how that record reads. Allen has already been through seven losses and still stacked 27 wins on top of them. That tells me he’s been in rooms where things went sideways and found a way back to the win column more often than not.
I’m not going to fake a technical breakdown with details I can’t stand behind, so here’s what I can stand behind. Five-round fights are a different animal from three-rounders. Rounds 4 and 5 are where the guy with more total cage time tends to look comfortable while the guy with fewer reps finds out things about himself in real time. Allen has had twice as many professional nights to learn what his body does when the tank gets low. Duncan has the fresher record. I’ll take the longer résumé when the fight is this long.
The stakes are simple. For Duncan, beating a 34-fight veteran in a Fight Night headliner would be the biggest result on his record by a mile, the kind of win that turns a 15-2 prospect into a name at 185. For Allen, losing a main event to a man with half his experience would be the sort of night that gets your next booking moved down the poster.
Pick: Brendan Allen by submission, Round 4. He weathers whatever Duncan brings early, the fight drags into deep water, and the veteran closes it before the scorecards get involved.
Co-main: Matheus Camilo (11-3) vs. Jai Herbert (14-6-1)
Here’s where I eat a little of my own logic, and I’ll explain why. Herbert has the experience edge again, 21 fights to Camilo’s 14. But this is a three-round lightweight bout, and the shorter the fight, the less runway that experience gets to matter.
The win rates point the other way. Camilo is at 79% (11 of 14). Herbert is at 67% (14 of 21), plus a draw. Over 15 minutes, I’d rather back the guy who’s been winning at a higher clip than the guy who’s simply been around longer. In a five-rounder I might flip this. In a three-rounder I won’t.
Pick: Matheus Camilo by TKO, Round 2. It’s a bold call off a modest dataset, and I’m fine with that. Nobody ever retired rich picking decisions in co-mains.
Quick picks for the rest of the top of the card
Loopy Godínez (14-6) vs. Ketlen Souza (17-6), women’s strawweight. Souza brings 23 fights and a 74% win rate. Godínez has 20 fights at 70%. The gap is small on both counts, and both lean Souza. Pick: Ketlen Souza by unanimous decision.
Andre Fili (25-14) vs. Kai Kamaka III (18-8-1), featherweight. Fili has been in 39 pro fights, which is a lot of miles on any featherweight. He’s won 64% of them. Kamaka sits at 67% over 27 fights. I’ll lean toward the slightly better rate and the fewer miles. Pick: Kai Kamaka III by decision.
Julius Walker (7-3) vs. Gerald Meerschaert (37-22), light heavyweight. This is my favorite stat on the card. Meerschaert has 22 losses, and Walker has 10 total professional fights. Meerschaert has more than twice as many losses as Walker has fights, and somehow that’s an argument for Meerschaert, because he’s also got 37 wins and 59 nights of this. Walker’s 70% beats Meerschaert’s 63% on paper, but 10 fights against 59 isn’t a fair comparison of paper. Pick: Gerald Meerschaert by submission, Round 1.
Malcolm Wellmaker (10-2) vs. Otari Tanzilovi (10-2), bantamweight. Identical records. Same wins, same losses, same 12 fights. My calculator just shrugged at me. When the numbers give you nothing, you pick a finish and live with it. Pick: Malcolm Wellmaker by KO, Round 1. I fully admit I could’ve flipped a quarter.
A couple of undercard notes
The heavyweight bout between Allen Frye Jr. (6-1) and RJ Harris (6-0) puts somebody’s unbeaten record on the line, and Harris is the one carrying it. I’ll take Frye, because he’s already lost once and learned what that costs, and he’s still 6-1. Further down, Niko Price (16-11) against Leon Shahbazyan (12-5) at welterweight is a 27-fight veteran against a guy with a better win rate (71% to Price’s 59%). Give me Shahbazyan on the cards.
That’s the board: Allen late, Camilo early, and a Meerschaert submission that I’ll be smug about for a week if it lands. If I go 0-for-5, Dana gets to be right about the so-called experts, and he’ll be impossible to live with until UFC 335 on Dec. 12.
