UFC middleweight Brendan Allen couldn’t help but crack a smile recounting the night he and his UFC 318 opponent Marvin Vettori brawled in a casino in Florida following an MMA event.
Allen (24-7) and Vettori scrapped in a casino following a PFL event in Hollywood, Florida last August. Since then not many details have come out about the incident outside of security footage, and Allen cleared up some of what happened.
“I was there with my wife and some friends, teammates, we were supporting teammates for PFL. I heard people the whole night telling me he’s looking for me, and my same response was I’m not very hard to find,” Allen told reporters including Cageside Press on Wednesday.
“On the way out I was walking, I talked to some guy, “Yeah Marvin’s looking for you”. I was like ok cool. On the way out the door of the arena into the Hard Rock I look over and my friend Tuco (Tokkos) is getting swung on by Marvin.”
Now that’s a detail not many know about the incident.
“At first he’s like telling him, you could see him do this (putting his hands in front of him), like calm down, chill. I look and I see him literally swinging at my friend Tuco. My boy muffs him in the throat and shoves him back,” said Allen.
“So then I took off running over there. People start grabbing me, there’s probably 40 people I would assume at that point, and he ends up somehow creeping off around the crowd and coming back behind me. I lose track of him in there.”
After Vettori circled around the crowd trying to find a way to Allen it was a fellow UFC fighter who helped the two meet on the floor.
“Michael Johnson gets everyone to move, he’s looking me dead in my eyes as you can see from the camera angles. He puts his hands up, everyone separates, and what do you do? You walk away and you’re a b*tch or you walk over there and hit him,” he said.
Even with the scrap it doesn’t seem like Allen is taking the fight very personal. He did clear up why Vettori has an issue with him.
“I always thought the guy was a little bit delusional. When you have the same reaction, the same interactions with people over and over, it’s just always kind of stupid to be honest,” he said.
“It’s like grow up man. I’m almost 30-years-old. I’m not trying to act stupid. Apparently it was he got mad at me saying one of his fights was sh*t.”
Watch the entire media day scrum with Brendan Allen above. He takes on Marvin Vettori at UFC 318 on Saturday night.