The Internet knows him by many names.

On Sherdog’s Fight Finder, he’s Kenneth Allen, owner of exactly one win in 35 fights. On the Underground he exists as both Kenneth Allen (2-23) and Kenneth Micah Allen (10-2).

On most MMA forums, he’s simply known as the “worst MMA fighter ever,” a guy whose name can be plugged in for an easy punchline or Wikipedia troll job. A recent Bleacher Report slideshow gave him the top spot on a list of the “25 Biggest Tomato Cans in MMA History,” ahead of such luminaries of losing as Bob Sapp and Jan Nortje.

The MMA Internet might not agree on much, but on Kenneth Allen it seems to have reached a rare consensus: The dude flat-out sucks.

But if you ask him, you’ll learn that there’s another name he takes a strange sort of pride in, and it’s one that might explain a lot about how Allen became the MMA community’s favorite inside joke.

“The guys on the circuit, they called me the Band-Aid,” Allen told MMAjunkie. “If someone gets hurt or pulls out of a fight and they need someone to step in to keep the fight on the card, I have no problem taking it.”

That helps explain not only his record – he admits it’s pretty dismal on paper, though not as bad as Sherdog makes it look, and he has fought (and lost to) his share of MMA vets such as Jake Ellenberger, Brock Larson and Nik Lentz – but also how he keeps getting fights.

His Sherdog record shows a 22-fight losing streak that spans slightly more than six years (Kenneth Micah Allen, however, won a KO victory as recently as 2009, according to mixedmartialarts.com). More than one alert observer has taken to an MMA forum to wonder who keeps putting this guy in the cage, and why.

To a fan, it might seem senseless. But to a promoter or matchmaker, like Iowa Challenge’s Chad Bergmeier, it’s more like a godsend.

“Honestly,” Bergmeier said of Allen, “I wish I had one of him in every weight class, just as a standby fighter.”

You see, especially for small, regional fight promoters, there are practical concerns at work.

“For example, today’s Tuesday,” Bergmeier said. “If I’ve got a fight coming up this weekend and one of my guys is hurt and he was supposed to fight a guy that’s a big ticket-seller, I’ve got to keep that guy on the card. At this level, ticket sales are everything. We don’t have major sponsors. They just aren’t out there. You’ve got a UFC every other weekend, and it’s just not like it was in the late ’90s or the mid-2000s. You’ve got to keep that ticket-seller on the card. And if you need a guy who’s 170 or 185 [pounds], you could call Kenneth Allen and tell him you have a spot you need to fill, and he’d say, ‘How much and when?’ You tell him what you can afford to pay him, and he’ll show up and fight hard.”

That’s an important point for Allen. He knows people mock him on messageboards and hold his record up as proof of his paltry skills, but he also knows that most of those people have never actually seen him fight.

“All the fights I’ve lost, I’ve never been knocked out,” Allen said. “It’s basically just a training issue. I didn’t have time to train. I graduated from college in December of 2010. I was planning on training hard and fighting, but I ended up doing other stuff for work. But if someone calls me to fight, I don’t have the common sense to say no. I have no problem getting in the cage and fighting one-on-one with anybody. Whether I’m in shape or not, I feel like I’ve always got a chance. There’s no fight where you can see me just getting dominated, getting the hell beat out of me. There weren’t but three or four of those fights that I felt like I couldn’t legitimately win.”

Allen grew up in Illinois, with a family of wrestlers who instilled in him a certain mentality. He was a standout wrestler in high school, even stuck with it through junior college, but eventually he had to let it go. He studied sociology at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, he said, and now makes his living doing construction work with his uncles and cousins across Illinois and Iowa.

Fighting wasn’t ever something he planned to do for a career, Allen said, “but it’s still something I like doing. It’s kind of fun.”

“I fought under different names before,” Allen said. “I fought Friday and Saturday night. My buddy and I, they called us the road warriors. On Friday right after class we would get on the road and show up right as the fights started. There’s been so many fights that I’ve gotten to at the last minute. I’ve literally had to tape my hands and get dressed in the car on the way to the fight.”

And see, that’s the important thing – especially for people in Bergmeier’s spot. Allen can be counted on to show up and give whatever he has, even if it’s not all that much.

“Every time he goes in there, you know he’s going to get a takedown,” Bergmeier said. “Whoever he fights, he’s probably going to be able to take him down at least once. But then he’ll gas out or get caught in a situation where he doesn’t know what to do and then tap.”

According to Bergmeier, the only fight where Allen “just tanked” was against UFC and Strikeforce vet Paul Bradley, who submitted him with a guillotine choke in 45 seconds.

“He came to us after that one and said, ‘I don’t know what happened. You can cut my pay if you need to,’” Bergmeier said. “I mean, is he overmatched? Yeah. Is his training very limited? Yeah. But at the same time, if you have a guy who’s sold 150 tickets, you can’t have that guy not fight.”

In promoter-speak, they call guys like Allen “opponents.” You have the one guy who you need to find a place for on your card, usually because he’s a local draw or a promising up-and-comer, and that guy has to fight someone. The old school tough guys who would say yes to anyone, anytime just aren’t in abundant supply anymore, according to Bergmeier.

“I think it’s out there that, everyone’s training now. The guys who aren’t, they don’t want to get bloodwork and all that done just to go get smashed,” Bergmeier said.

But Allen? He’ll do it. He’ll probably lose, too, and people on the Internet will probably keep laughing at him when he does. He knows all this, but somehow it doesn’t ever seem to factor into his decision-making.

He’s slowed down recently – he is 33 years old – and has been focusing more on work. He’d like to take some time and get some actual training in, he said, in part because the people who make fun of him from a distance don’t seem to realize that he’s stepping in the cage with almost no preparation, and a part of him would like them to see what he could do if he actually had time to train for a fight.

“It’s not like someone calls me and says, ‘Do you want this fight in two months?’” Allen said. “No, I get a call saying, ‘Can you fight this weekend?’”

Allen doesn’t kid himself. He knows what those calls mean. It means someone on the other end is in a jam, and they need someone to step up and fight some hotshot local who’s probably been preparing for this night for weeks, if not months. They need someone crazy or stupid or just plain reckless enough to say yes to an offer most people wouldn’t even consider.

And when that call comes, does he ever tell them no?

“Not ever,” Allen said. “If they called me tomorrow and said they needed someone this weekend, I’d be there.”