Brendan Allen is back on a fight card this Saturday in Las Vegas, and the opponent is Edmen Shahbazyan. The UFC Vegas 118 co-main event gives Allen a new booking after the planned matchup with former middleweight champion Dricus du Plessis fell apart.
The fight is being searched now because it comes after Allen said the du Plessis bout was supposed to be settled months ago. He said the deal was supposed to be done in January, that he was told it would happen around May or at the end of April, and that it later was said du Plessis was hurt and not fighting until July. Allen said he even asked for Kamaru Usman once that option disappeared, but by then he was tired of waiting and needed the money, so he took Shahbazyan instead.
That makes the booking a meaningful one for both men. Allen, a top 5 fighter, gets an unranked opponent after several fight plans collapsed, while Shahbazyan gets one of the biggest opportunities of his career on a three-fight win streak. He most recently stopped Andre Muniz at UFC 320 this past October, and he was originally slated to face Jun Yong Park in April before a Park injury scratched that contest.
Allen said the run-up to this fight turned into a string of missed dates. He said he was supposed to fight in March, then April, then May before the final booking changed, and he added that after he asked for several opponents, nobody wanted to fight. At one point, he said, the du Plessis fight was a done deal before the whole thing changed again, leaving him to wonder whether he was finessed and by whom.
What comes next is simple enough: Allen and Shahbazyan meet in the UFC Vegas 118 co-main event on Saturday, and the unanswered question is who, exactly, made the call to move past the du Plessis fight and land on Shahbazyan instead. For Allen, the date is finally here; for the fight that never was, the explanation is still missing.
