Max Holloway and Arnold Allen engage in back-and-forth war, Holloway emerges victorious in UFC on ESPN 44 main event
The Ultimate Fighting Championship returns to us tonight, April 15, 2023, for UFC on ESPN 44, going down live from the T-Mobile Center in Kansas City, Missouri.
Headlining the event was a matchup of featherweight contenders, as former champion Max Holloway (24-7) faces no. 4 ranked Arnold Allen (19-2) in the main event of the evening.
Co-headlining the event was also a featherweight contest, this one between coming Edson Barboza (23-11) and Billy Quarantillo (17-5).
Reverting back to our main event:
Holloway had gone 2-3 over his last five, all three defeats coming to current champion Alexander Volkanovski, while Allen had been perfect thus far into his UFC tenure, winning all ten promotional fights to date.
Continue reading to see how this 145 lb main event of the evening went down:
Official Result: Max Holloway def. Arnold Allen via unanimous decision (49-46, 49-46, 48-47)
We had a competitive opening round between these two showing each man have success, though it’s presumed Holloway won on account of the strike count being 24-10 in favor of him.
Allen landed some good leg kicks early on as well as a hard overhand left that Holloway just ate, and Holloway landed nice three-four punch combinations at a couple points. Both talents are looking incredibly sharp tonight.
Allen has a better round two, as he continues to land that nasty overhand left throughout it. He’s able to follow some of them up with right hooks as well, he made a serious adjustment following the opening stretch.
Though Allen keeps his pace through the third round, Holloway’s very slick and difficult for him to cut off.
Allen fought considerably well in the first round four of his career, as he landed a couple more of those overhands and isn’t slowing down, though he’s getting out-struck, and he’s eating some nasty body kicks from Holloway.
Allen comes out with a furious pace in the fifth and final round, and he keeps it through the final five minutes, just unloading combinations in bunches. Holloway did land a nasty spinning back elbow early on, but Allen remains unfazed and continues walking him down.
The fifth round was his best of the fight, as he landed a number of heavy punches throughout. He also went for a lot of head kicks throughout this fight, and he didn’t land a single one cleanly until the fifth where he landed two in a row.
This decision wasn’t as wide as it looked, Allen certainly won both the second and fifth rounds, but Holloway’s striking in the first, third, and fourth was just a tad too diverse for him to deal with.
Arnold Allen really showed up tonight and put on one hell of a fight.
Max Holloway on the other hand gets back to his winning ways with a victory over someone that was 10-0 in the UFC and 19-1 as a professional. What a performance by him tonight at UFC on ESPN 44.
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