Allen vs Duncan results: Allen submits Duncan in round five

Saturday at the Meta Apex was a good card with a strange shape. Twelve fights, nine finishes, five underdogs with their hands raised, four Performance of the Night bonuses, no Fight of the Night, and one draw that a single point decided. The main event was the best of it, and for four rounds it looked like it was going the other way.

Brendan Allen submitted Christian Leroy Duncan at 2:46 of the fifth round to headline UFC Fight Night: Allen vs Duncan. Earlier the same day in Rzeszów, Vitalii Yakymenko also won a five-round fight by fifth-round submission, and in Casablanca Abdoulaye Kane needed one round. Those two are at the bottom.

Allen vs Duncan: out-landed in four rounds, finished in the fifth

Photo: WEIGHING IN / CC BY 4.0

If you only read the striking numbers you would score this for Duncan, and you would not be crazy. He landed 106 significant strikes to Allen's 51, out-landed him in four of the five rounds (the third was level at 6 apiece), and the fourth round was a beating: 46 significant strikes to 17. Duncan landed 56 percent of what he threw. He came in on a five-fight win streak, with unanimous decisions over Roman Dolidze in March and Jared Cannonier in July, and for long stretches he fought like a man about to make it six.

Allen's fight was in the other columns. He landed 4 of 11 takedowns, controlled Duncan for 8:39 of the 22:46 the fight lasted, and attempted two submissions. He scored a takedown in every round except the fourth, which is exactly the round he lost worst. In the fifth he took Duncan down again, controlled him for 82 seconds, and at 2:46 Duncan tapped. Marc Goddard was the referee.

I keep coming back to how close the striking-only version of this fight was to being the official one. If Allen does not find the finish, two judges are probably looking at a fourth round that was Duncan's by a mile and a fifth that started badly for Allen. Instead it is his fourth straight win since the loss to Anthony Hernandez in February 2025, after Marvin Vettori, Reinier de Ridder and Edmen Shahbazyan. He is 28-7. Duncan is 15-3 and that streak is over.

Allen went in ranked #4 at middleweight and Duncan #10. The last two men to beat Allen are both still on that list: Nassourdine Imavov, #3, who won a decision over him in Paris in September 2024, and Hernandez, now #8. Either rematch makes more sense than another fight with someone ranked below him. A contender who has won four in a row and whose only recent losses came against the top 10 is a man with a pretty obvious next booking.

Who saw it coming

Our model did not. It gave Allen 37 percent going in, and I spent a whole preview walking through why. Every factor group it uses pointed at Duncan, led by striking, and the striking numbers above suggest it was not reading the matchup wrong. It was reading the wrong fight. A model built on how often fighters land and absorb has a hard time pricing a man who loses the striking 106 to 51 and wins by tap.

The market had Allen, but less and less of him. The sportsbook consensus had him as short as -157 on October 3, and he closed at -115, with Duncan at -105, across 18 books. Take the bookmaker margin out and that is barely better than even. The line spent the week moving toward the man who lost.

Further down, the closing favorite lost five times:

The model had Tanzilovi and Price as its own picks where the market had both as underdogs, so it gets credit for two of the five. It also missed Herbert, Ribeiro and Frye along with the market, and it missed the main event on its own. Count it up and the model's favorite won six fights, lost four, and there was one exact coin flip and one draw. The market's favorite won six and lost five. Neither of them had a good night, which is about what a night with five upsets should look like.

On to the rest of the card

• Ernesta Kareckaite and Melissa Gatto opened the night with a majority draw, 28-28, 28-28 and 29-27 for Gatto. The commission record shows Kareckaite was docked a point in the first round for grabbing the fence. Two of the three judges gave her that round before the deduction, so without the lost point the result is a split decision for Kareckaite. She also out-landed Gatto 48 to 41 in significant strikes. One fence grab turned a win into a draw, which is the rule working exactly as written and still a rough way to lose half a result. She is 6-2-2.
• Loopy Godinez (-242), ranked #8 at women's strawweight, beat Ketlen Souza 29-28 on all three cards. All three judges gave Souza the second round and Godinez the other two. Godinez landed 67 significant strikes to 63 and only 2 of 13 takedowns, but she had 3:39 of control to Souza's 29 seconds. It is a rebound from the submission loss to Tatiana Suarez at UFC 327 in April. Not a statement, just a professional win.
• Jai Herbert (+159) lost the first round on every card and then won the next two on every card, 29-28 across the board over Camilo. He out-landed him 54 to 43 while throwing 157 significant strikes to Camilo's 86. Camilo was a -189 favorite and the model's 66 percent pick.
• Andre Fili (-146) dropped Kai Kamaka III and stopped him 22 seconds into the second round. Performance of the Night, his 26th win.
• Otari Tanzilovi and Malcolm Wellmaker each scored a knockdown, but Tanzilovi out-landed him 38 to 17 and finished it at 2:39 of the second. Performance of the Night. The market had Wellmaker at -209.
• Alice Pereira (-134) beat #15 Daria Zhelezniakova by TKO at the end of the first round, 5:00 on the clock, after 4:05 of control and 20 significant strikes to 6. Performance of the Night, and she is 7-1.
• Julius Walker (-312) went 3 for 3 on takedowns, landed 38 of 50 significant strikes and stopped Gerald Meerschaert at 3:35 of the second. That is six straight losses for Meerschaert, now 37-23. Thirty-seven wins is a career worth more than the way this run has gone.
• Francisco Prado opened as a +130 underdog against Ismael Bonfim, closed at -160, and stopped him at 4:23 of the first. The line flip was right.
• Niko Price (+119) landed 41 significant strikes to Leon Shahbazyan's zero and finished him at 1:58 of the first. Shahbazyan threw one significant strike all night.
• Brendson Ribeiro was the biggest underdog to win at +306. He submitted Felipe Franco, the -394 favorite and the model's 72 percent pick, at 1:49 of the first round. Franco is 11-3.
• Allen Frye Jr. opened at +186 and drifted out to +287 by the bell. Then he knocked down RJ Harris, landed 40 of 55, and stopped him at 2:59 of the first. Harris came in unbeaten and leaves 6-1.

Six of the seven prelims ended inside the distance, five of them in the first round, and the only one that went to the cards was the draw. The prelims were the better half of the night.

Elsewhere Saturday: KSW 122 and PFL Africa: Morocco

At KSW 122 in Rzeszów, Vitalii Yakymenko kept the bantamweight title he won over Sebastian Przybysz by five-round decision at KSW 115 in February. This time he did not need the scorecards: he submitted Marcello Morelli at 1:09 of the fifth round as the -197 favorite. He is 12-2. Two title-length main events on the same Saturday, two fifth-round submissions.

The rest of the KSW card leaned toward the market, with two exceptions. Wilson Varela (+118) submitted Marian Ziolkowski at 3:40 of the first, and Szymon Bajor (+186) took a decision from Kacper Paczoski. Andrzej Grzebyk beat Laid Zerhouni on the cards, and Adam Soldaev stopped Mateusz Makarowski at 4:17 of the first.

At PFL Africa: Morocco in Casablanca, Abdoulaye Kane (-394) stopped Badr Medkouri at 4:06 of the first round in the heavyweight main event. Kane was knocked out by Justin Clarke in the first round in Pretoria in April, so this was the answer he needed. He is 6-2. On the undercard, Patrick Ocheme went to 10-1 with a first-round TKO of Cornel Thompson, Reda Abdellaoui went to 5-0 with a first-round submission, and David Samuel went to 7-0 on the cards. Hussain Al Kurdi and Demba Seck ended in a no contest 37 seconds in.

The UFC is back next Saturday in Edmonton for UFC Fight Night: Buckley vs Malott, and PFL goes to Chicago the night before. Allen has done everything a #4 is supposed to do. The question now is whether the UFC gives him Imavov or Hernandez, or makes him wait.