{"id":197973,"date":"2025-10-08T16:54:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-08T16:54:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/197973\/"},"modified":"2025-10-08T16:54:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-08T16:54:09","slug":"former-ufc-fighter-gunned-down-in-fatal-drive-by-shooting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/197973\/","title":{"rendered":"Former UFC fighter gunned down in fatal drive-by shooting"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Former Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) featherweight Suman Mokhtarian, who was also a contestant on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mmamania.com\/ufc-ultimate-fighter-tuf-27-results-recap-miocic-cormier-undefeated-fs1-mma\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Season 27 of The Ultimate Fighter (TUF)<\/a>, was shot and killed in a drive-by shooting on Wednesday in Riverstone, a suburb of Sydney in New South Wales, Australia.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">He was just 33 years old.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Mokhtarian was first targeted by assassins outside his Australian Top Team gym in early 2024 but survived the ordeal, then found himself in the crosshairs for a second time last April. That prompted authorities to intervene and shut down a local mixed martial arts (MMA) event to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mmamania.com\/2025\/4\/3\/24400398\/threat-of-gangland-hit-on-former-ufc-fighter-suman-mokhtarian-leads-to-sydney-mma-event-cancellation\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">prevent a potential \u201cgangland hit.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">\u201cWe believe he may have been out for a walk, but we\u2019re yet to confirm that,\u201d Riverstone police commander Jason Joyce told reporters during a press conference (via <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailytelegraph.com.au\/subscribe\/news\/1\/?sourceCode=DTWEB_WRE170_a_GGL&amp;dest=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.dailytelegraph.com.au%2Ftruecrimeaustralia%2Fpolice-courts-nsw%2Fman-shot-dead-in-sydney-daylight-attack%2Fnews-story%2F79f78155b04a143792924035c997de31&amp;memtype=anonymous&amp;mode=premium&amp;v21=GROUPA-Segment-1-NOSCORE\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Daily Telegraph<\/a>). \u201cYou\u2019d want to think that in a residential area like that, people could wander the streets at that time of night and be safe, but we do believe it\u2019s a targeted attack. It would\u2019ve been a horrific thing to witness and it\u2019s certainly not something we tolerate in the community.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Mokhtarian (8-2) was defeated by Ricky Steele in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mmamania.com\/ufc-ultimate-fighter-tuf-27-results-recap-miocic-cormier-undefeated-fs1-mma\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">TUF 27 quarterfinals<\/a> but managed to score a spot on the UFC roster anyway. Unfortunately, the Aussie was unsuccessful in two trips to the Octagon, getting stopped by Sodiq Yusuff at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mmamania.com\/2018\/11\/27\/18114578\/ufc-fight-night-142-adelaide-results-dos-santos-vs-tuivasa-live-stream-play-by-play-updates-mma\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">UFC Adelaide<\/a> before losing a decision to Seung Woo Choi at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mmamania.com\/2019\/12\/20\/21031939\/ufc-fight-night-165-busan-live-stream-results-edgar-vs-korean-zombie-play-by-play-updates-mma\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">UFC Busan<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) featherweight Suman Mokhtarian, who was also a contestant on Season 27 of The&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":197974,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[49,48,641,33601,638,82,702,97992],"class_list":["post-197973","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-fighting","tag-latest-ufc-mma-news","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-ufc-news","tag-ultimate-fighter-27"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197973","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=197973"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197973\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/197974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=197973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=197973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=197973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}