Brendan Allen will not get the Dricus du Plessis fight he expected. Instead, Allen faces Edmen Shahbazyan on Saturday in Las Vegas in the co-main event of UFC Vegas 118, a booking that sends him from a possible showdown with a former middleweight champion to an unranked opponent on a tight schedule.
That change matters because Allen, a top-five middleweight, said he has spent months waiting for the right name to materialize. He said the du Plessis fight was supposed to be done in January, then he was told it would happen around May before the champion was said to be hurt and unavailable until July. Allen said he even asked for Kamaru Usman once the du Plessis fight appeared to stall, but he grew tired of waiting and took the fight in front of him instead.
Allen first called for du Plessis after stopping Reinier de Ridder at UFC Vancouver in October, hoping to turn that win into a fight that would push him closer to the title picture. Du Plessis is a former middleweight champion, and the UFC has not yet announced the rumored du Plessis-Usman matchup for UFC Oklahoma City in July, leaving Allen on the outside of the path he thought he had already entered.
The details Allen gave point to a booking that never locked in the way he expected. He said he was told du Plessis would not fight until July after being hurt, then saw du Plessis post training videos the next week. Allen said he felt he had been “a little bit finessed,” though he did not know by whom, and his frustration showed in the blunt way he explained why he moved on: he wanted to work, get better and make money instead of sitting out.
Shahbazyan brings a different kind of risk. He enters on a three-fight win streak and stopped Andre Muniz in his most recent bout at UFC 320 in October, while Allen said he had already been supposed to fight in March, then April, then May before this matchup finally settled in. Shahbazyan was also slated to face Jun Yong Park in April before Park’s injury scratched that contest, leaving both men with reasons to take this opening.
For Allen, Saturday is less about the opponent than the lost opportunity. He still gets to compete, but the path that once pointed toward du Plessis now runs through Shahbazyan, and the unanswered question is who exactly moved the pieces that way. Until the UFC makes the next title-adjacent booking official, Allen has only one thing he can control: what he does in Las Vegas.
