FO’s top prospect to watch outside MMA’s major leagues this month is Louisiana’s Brendan Allen. Ahead of his fight for the Legacy Fighting Alliance middleweight championship at LFA 32, he reveals how his studies won’t stop him from becoming one of the UFC’s youngest new recruits.

Middleweight Brendan Allen’s most valuable skill is his ability to multi-task. If he wasn’t quite so adept at managing his time and wearing a number of hats, the Southeastern Louisiana University student, who impressively moonlights as a 10-bout prospect for Legacy Fighting Alliance, would be at a loose end. There’d be an itch he wasn’t able to scratch.

As it happens, Allen, 21, is making sense of it all. He’s balancing school work with gym work and, with an LFA title shot planned for early 2018 and a degree in criminal justice also on the horizon, excelling on both fronts.

“I’ve been training since I was 13 years old,” says the Louisiana-native. “I started with jiu-jitsu, wrestled in high-school as a freshman, and then started doing a little standup. But there’s not much standup where I live.

“My cousins trained with Rich Clementi, a UFC veteran, and I’d go to his gym every now and then before I made the switch and started training full-time there. He became my coach.”

As well as his work with Clementi, Allen commutes to Milwaukee a couple of weeks at a time during fight camp in order to hook up with Duke Roufus and improve his striking. After that, with a bout in the bag and the win secure, he returns to Louisiana to relax, feel human, study. Then the process starts all over again. He travels to New Orleans for his BJJ, while his striking, pad and mitt-work doesn’t even require him leaving the house.

“My dad holds the mitts for me,” Allen says, revealing, also, that he intends to temporarily base himself in Milwaukee once he graduates from college in May. “I’ve already talked to Duke, my manager, about it,” he adds. “My wife and I thought about moving there, but I’m going to go there once a month when I’m not in camp and then do my camps there. We don’t make too much money in LFA. It’s not like the UFC. I don’t want to move there and have to move my wife from her job. So, instead of moving her there, I’ll make the sacrifice and leave my family for a week or so out of the month.

“I’m prepared to do it. I’ve always been very competitive like that. I’m still just starting at Roufusport, but my improvements give an indication of where I’ll be in a year or two. I didn’t really have confidence in my standup before arriving at Roufusport. I was a total newbie. But my tenacity helps. I won’t quit. My body gives out before I quit.”

Life will soon get serious for a young man gifted enough to balance a flourishing fight career with full-time education. The demands will be greater; the pressure will be greater. Yet, encouragingly, all the relevant pieces are beginning to fall into place for Allen.

“Markus Perez just got signed by the UFC, so now the LFA belt is vacant and they already told me I’m guaranteed to fight for it,” says Allen, 8-2 in his MMA career. “I graduate in May, but if I get the call I’m not going to turn it down. I’ll have to talk to my professors and sort something out.”

If anyone is going to make it work, it’s Brendan Allen.

Two more prospects to watch

Alexey Kunchenko

Born Russia

Division 170lb

Age 33

No spring chicken by anyone’s standards, but the M-1 Global welterweight champ is a perfect 16-0 and passed his latest test with ease by knocking out Sergey Romanov for his third title defence. If he puts his hands on some opponents with a bit more international name value, he might prove himself worthy of a spot on a bigger stage.

Dylan Tuke

Born Ireland

Division 145lb

Age 21

‘The Nuke’ is back. The SBG Ireland product took 10 months off after a 20-second KO loss, admitting he’d got caught up in the hype. He refocused and stayed patient in his return at BAMMA 32 to get back in the win column with a TKO at home in Dublin’s 3Arena. Like some of his teammates, he’s an entertaining interviewee, too.

Tuke will be back in action on March 2nd, as he is set to make his debut at Brave Combat Federation against Sodiq Yusuff at Brave 10.