A British MMA fighter claims he was attacked while walking on the streets of Montreal, Canada, because he didn’t speak French.
UFC featherweight Arnold Allen dropped the surprising news Tuesday as he previewed the card for Saturday’s UFC 321.
“I got beat up in the street because I wasn’t using French,” Allen said on his YouTube channel. “Got jumped cuz yeah I didn’t speak French.
“So that’s what the bruises are all about,” he said, referencing the several facial wounds he sported including two thumb-sized welts, one underneath each eye,
“Don’t worry about it,” he told his viewers.
The 31-year-old dropped the topic quickly, without detailing anything else from the alleged attack in the French-speaking city.
Allen trains out of Tristar Gym in Montreal under Firas Zahabi.
He didn’t reveal what exactly he was doing in Canada besides “training for stuff.”
The 20-3-0 fighter currently ranks in the top 10 in the featherweight division but has not been in the octagon since his victory over Giga Chikadze on July 7, 2024, in Manchester, England.
The year-and-a-half-long absence continues Allen’s streak of being one of the more reclusive active fighters in the UFC.
Allen fought in two bouts in 2022, a rare instance in his decade-long career of having multiple fights in the same calendar year.
He won each fight, knocking out Dan Hooker in the first round back on March 19 before TKOing then fifth-ranked Calvin Kakkar during their main event bout in Las Vegas on Oct. 29.
Allen said he picked up the second fight because he had a chance to prove where he stood within the division.
“It’s the opportunity I want against the guy I want to fight. He’s No. 5 in the [UFC rankings] for a reason, and I want to put myself in that elite caliber,” Allen told The Post before the fight.
“Once I got into rankings, I was around the rankings in the same sort of spot. The only reason I asked for this fight was just ’cause he was above me. He was the one above me, and it was the one that made the most sense,” he said.
Allen was previously given a five-month suspended prison sentence for his involvement in a bar fight in his native Ipswich, England, according to the Daily Mail.
He plead guilty to public fighting after he got drunk and attacked a bar owner as he tried to “protect his girlfriend,” the outlet reported.
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