{"id":551710,"date":"2026-03-20T00:56:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-20T00:56:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/551710\/"},"modified":"2026-03-20T00:56:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-20T00:56:08","slug":"brendan-allen-meets-edmen-shahbazyan-at-junes-ufc-fight-night-278","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/551710\/","title":{"rendered":"Brendan Allen meets Edmen Shahbazyan at June’s UFC Fight Night 278"},"content":{"rendered":"

Middleweight contender Brendan Allen will get a surprising next opponent for his next octagon appearance.<\/p>\n

Allen (26-7 MMA, 14-4 UFC) is set to take on Edmen Shahbazyan (16-5 MMA, 9-5 UFC) at UFC Fight Night 278<\/a> on June 6, which takes place at the Meta APEX in Las Vegas (Paramount+<\/a>).<\/p>\n

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A person with knowledge of the matchup verified the booking to MMA Junkie following an initial report<\/a> from journalist Marcel Dorff.<\/p>\n

Allen, No. 7 in the latest USA TODAY Sports\/MMA Junkie middleweight rankings<\/a>, had been angling for a grudge match with former champ Du Plessis. The 30-year-old once again called out Du Plessis following his corner stoppage TKO<\/a> of Reinier de Ridder at UFC Fight Night 262 in October, but to no avail.<\/p>\n

Instead he gets the unranked Shahbazyan, who after losing five of seven fights from August 2020 to August 2024, has turned it around with a three-fight winning streak. The 28-year-old is coming off a first-round knockout<\/a> of Andre Muniz at UFC 320 in October.<\/p>\n

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The latest UFC Fight Night 278 lineup includes:<\/p>\n

Belal Muhammad v. Gabriel Bonfim<\/p>\n

Brendan Allen vs. Edmen Shahbazyan<\/p>\n

Jeisla Chaves vs. Yuneisy Duben<\/p>\n

Edgar Chairez vs. Bruno Silva<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on MMA Junkie: Brendan Allen gets surprising matchup for UFC Vegas 118<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Middleweight contender Brendan Allen will get a surprising next opponent for his next octagon appearance. Allen (26-7 MMA,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":551711,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,13211,22191,272915,786,785,3169,85,787],"class_list":["post-551710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-brendan-allen","tag-du-plessis","tag-edmen-shahbazyan","tag-fighting","tag-mma","tag-mma-junkie","tag-sports","tag-ufc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=551710"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551710\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/551711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=551710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=551710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=551710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}