Childhood & Early Life
Alan Jouban was born and brought up in Louisiana in the Lafayette region. Born on 25th November 1981, Alan had an inclination towards sports and other athletic activities since his early childhood. He played soccer with the neighbourhood kids on the streets, then in school as well. He got good at soccer eventually and considered a career in the sport.
By the time he was a teenager, he had no certain goal in life and just enjoyed training in gym and working out for hours at a time. His athletic aspirations continued until he got enrolled to the college in University of Louisiana. But after spending two semesters at the college, he just knew that this life wasn’t meant for him and there was no point in stretching that. He left college after 2 semesters. He had grown into a healthy young man by then, and started trying for modelling, in order to make some money.
He struck gold with modelling and slowly became the face of brands such as Nike and Pepsi among many others. He had started making huge money and a probable career in acting in film or TV seemed like a possibility. But his fate had some other plans for him, and he found himself practicing Muay Thai, a martial art. While doing that, his interest peaked in MMA and he started training for the same, while getting on with his modelling assignments. But it became harder for him to manage two ‘seemingly different’ careers, and he chose MMA, cutting down on his modelling projects.
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Career
As an amateur, Alan Jouban was undefeated for the first few months when he started entering the ring and he seemed to have that skill set an MMA fighter must have, despite the lack of apparent physicality and strength. He knew that for the bigger leagues, he needed to bulk up more and he did just that, and by March 2010, he started appearing in better events.
In his career’s first fight, Alan won the match in mere 14 seconds in the very first round against a weaker opponent via KO and in his career’s second fight against Kyle Griffin, which also happened to be his first professional fight, Alan won in the first round, again through a KO, in February 2011.
Fighting for Tachi Palace Fights, his second match saw him losing to Chidi Njokuani in May 2011. But in the next six fights for several different promotions, Alan registered victory after victory, winning 4 of the fights with Knockouts and 1 each by anonymous decision and submission.
He faced a loss against Mike Rhodes in RFA in October 2013, but again made a solid comeback and won the next three fights against some fierce opponents. In his last fight at RFC promotion, he defeated Ricky Legere Jr. by a split decision in the third round.
After that, it was the time to make the grand entry in the UFC ring, the most regarded MMA event across the world and his first match was scheduled to take place on 16th August 2014 against Seth Baczynski. The match was filled with some intense back and forth action, but Alan eventually emerged the victor. And the fight, which was noted to be one of the best fights in that year, was honoured with ‘Fight of the Night’ bonus for both the fighters.
For his second UFC fight, Alan was pitted against Warlley Alves, who was a major Ultimate Fighter winner and a super strong opponent. The fight took place in November 2014, and although both the fighters were at their peak during the entire fight, Alves was named the winner by the end it, a decision which was highly controversial among the media outlets.
Alan returned to his scintillating form in his next match and knocked Richard Walsh out in the first round itself, and his fourth fight was cancelled due to some injury Alan suffered during training.
In July 2015, Matt Dwyer faced Alan for a fight which was regarded as one of the most anticipated fights that season. And the fighters didn’t disappoint the fans and it was a thrilling contest with the both of them landing blows after blows on each other and maintained the suspense till the very end. Alan had one point taken away due to an unintentional knee attack and despite that, he was named the winner by the end of fight. The fight, as expected, was chosen to be ‘Fight of the Night’ and both of them were awarded with a bonus.
Albert Tumenov knocked Alan out in the first round in the next fight, and Alan took the revenge of the bitter loss from another fighter Brandon O’Reilly by knocking him out in the same way he got knocked out in the previous fight.
The next match brought Alan his career’s third ‘Fight of the Night’ bonus in a match against Belal Muhammad on July 2016. The fierce match ended with Alan winning via anonymous decision and started looking forward to his next match to end the year against Mike Perry. Alan won the match without breaking too much sweat.
In the next fight, which was slated for March 2017, Alan couldn’t have taken his opponent Gunnar Nelson lightly. In the match, both the fighters rained punches on each other, but Alan was on the receiving end of the more brutal ones of them, and when Nelson went for a guillotine choke, Alan couldn’t help himself and submitted to his much stronger opponent.
In July 2017, Alan injured his foot while training and took his name out of the highly anticipated fight in which he had to face Brian Camozzi and in his last fight to date, Alan lost to Niko Price via KO in the fight, which took place on 5th August 2017.
Jouban also continued his modelling career in 2016 as he signed an endorsement deal with Versace and appeared in their short film with Gigi Hadid for the Dylan Blue Fragrance.
