Despite his lack of experience, Malkoun showed no hesitation in executing his gameplan. Dragging Allen to the mat seven times over the course of the 15-minute bout, Malkoun amassed over seven minutes of control time. This wasn’t enough to impress the judges, however, with all three scoring the bout 29-28 for Allen.
No, you never hope to lose a bout, but for someone so new to the sport, there’s only positives to take away from the loss, which is why he’s turned back around four months later to fight Nick Maximov at UFC Fight Night: Grasso vs Araujo.
“I haven’t had that many fights, I’m learning on the job,” Malkoun said. “With each fight, you’re just going to get more comfortable, more relaxed and it’s just going to get easier and easier.”
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“It’s good to be active, keep going early on in the career,” Malkoun said. “I got to get the experience. Just got to keep building and get better.”
Maximov is on a similar trajectory to Malkoun, only fighting nine times professionally while coming off a loss in his last outing. So, this matchup should be a perfect tell for how talented Malkoun is, and what he still may need to improve on. And although he isn’t fighting someone on the cusp of the middleweight Top 15, he still expects this fight to be as difficult as any other.