"It was supposed to be a done deal in January. I was told it was a done deal," Brendan Allen said, summing up why he will not be fighting Dricus du Plessis — and why he’ll instead meet Edmen Shahbazyan on Saturday in Las Vegas as the co‑main event of UFC Vegas 118.
Allen has been vocal about the sequence that left him on the card against an unranked opponent: he said the du Plessis matchup was meant to be finalized in January, then pushed toward March, April and May before he was told du Plessis was hurt and wouldn’t fight until July. Shahbazyan, a three‑fight winner who stopped Andre Muniz at UFC 320 in October, steps in after a run of scheduling shifts that also saw Shahbazyan lose an April bout when Jun Yong Park was injured.
Allen said he pushed for other options after the du Plessis plan unraveled — he told promoters he wanted Kamaru Usman and said he asked "for pretty much everyone" — but none of those alternatives came together. "I was supposed to fight in March, then April, then May," Allen said. "Then nobody wanted to fight. I asked for pretty much everyone. Nobody wanted to fight whether they were hurt, they didn’t want to fight, whatever the reason may be."
The clearest measure of what Allen lost is timing and profile. He called for a higher‑profile opponent after stopping Reinier de Ridder at UFC Vancouver in October, and a du Plessis matchup would have matched that push. Instead the promotion slotted him opposite Shahbazyan, who is unranked but arrives on a three‑fight win streak and with a late‑season stoppage at UFC 320 as his most recent resume item.
Allen did not hide his frustration. When told du Plessis had been sidelined until July, he said he watched social media and saw du Plessis continue to train. "But he posted training videos the next week, so I don’t know. I kind of think I was a little bit finessed, to be honest with you, and I don’t know by who," Allen said. He added that he was not willing to sit idle: "I don’t want to sit out. I’m not hurt."
That contradiction — a fight declared dead because of injury, then public training footage from the same fighter days later — is the bluntest point of friction in Allen’s account. He framed the outcome in plain terms when asked why he had to take a lower‑profile matchup: "Because he’s a bitch," he said, later adding, "F*cking tell me about it."
The unsettled detail is whether du Plessis was actually injured; Allen’s claim that du Plessis would not fight until July stands alongside his observation about training clips, and neither the injury status nor a replacement plan has been clarified by the promotion. There are separate rumors that du Plessis could face Kamaru Usman in the July main event in Oklahoma City, but that matchup has not been announced by the UFC.
What happens next is straightforward and immediate: Allen will share the cage with Shahbazyan on Saturday in Las Vegas, with the fight serving as his co‑main slot at UFC Vegas 118. Beyond the result, the relevant unanswered question is now sharper — if Allen’s version is correct, a higher‑profile bout that would have come sooner was lost in January and never recovered. If it was miscommunication, the promotion and the other fighter will need to explain why a bout labeled "done" did not materialize.
