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Two weeks before his event, Ultimate Fighting Championship middleweight
Brendan
Allen is going from a ranked opponent to one that is
unranked.
The news first broke on Thursday from Fight
Bananas that Brad
Tavares has been forced out of his Dec. 4 match with Brendan
Allen (17-4) for undisclosed reasons. When interviewed by Fight
Bananas shortly after the news broke, Allen expressed his
frustrations for losing his highly touted opponent at UFC
on ESPN 31, and stated that Roman
Dolidze (9-1) would be taking Tavares’ place. The two will
middleweights will come to blows likely on the main card of the
last ESPN show of the year, one that will take place inside the UFC
Apex in Las Vegas.
“Well man, honestly, the fight just changed, so no Brad,” Allen
said in his interview. “We got Roman
Dolidze, I guess it was [Tavares’] training partner, I don’t
know how it all happened. Kind of weird, but yeah, happened here a
couple days ago.”
Allen is unbeaten as a middleweight dating back to a Legacy Fighting Alliance championship clash
with Anthony
Hernandez in 2018. Making his way to Dana White’s Contender Series after a trio of
victories with LFA, including a victory for the belt and a
successful defense, Allen springboarded up the division with wins
over Kevin
Holland, Tom Breese
and Punahele
Soriano over the last two years. His lone defeat inside the
Octagon came in a 195-pound catchweight contest against rising
talent Sean
Strickland in November.
Georgia’s Dolidze rebounded from his first career setback – a
decision loss to Trevin
Giles in March – by claiming a unanimous verdict over Laureano
Staropoli in June. The first six career outings for “The
Caucasian” all went his way by stoppage, never once leaving a match
in the hands of the judges. That finish streak included his UFC
debut in July 2020, when he knocked Khadis
Ibragimov out in the first round. Since then, it has been all
decisions for Dolidze, who won one over John Allan,
lost to Giles and then defeated Staropoli all within the year.
UFC on ESPN 31 will be held inside the UFC Apex in Las Vegas on
Dec. 4, with a bantamweight banger as the headliner when Rob Font
squares off with Jose Aldo.
While the remainder of the bout order has not been made official,
Jimmy
Crute will face Jamahal
Hill at light heavyweight, 10-1 Brad
Riddell will face 10-1 Rafael
Fiziev at lightweight and Matt Brown
comes to blows with Bryan
Barberena in the welterweight division.