Shahbazyan has certainly experienced some low points over the last
few years, but there’s still potential for a career renaissance
from “The Golden Boy,” given that he’s still just 27 years old and
appears to be figuring some things out. Shahbazyan had the right
connections to get rushed into the UFC via Dana White’s Contender
Series at just 20 years old, but no matter how he got the
opportunity, he certainly made the most of it. His UFC debut win
over Darren
Stewart was a bit ugly, but 2019 saw Shahbazyan rattle off
three straight first-round finishes to look like the next great
prospect at 185 pounds. Shahbazyan then got his first main event
spot against Derek
Brunson, which resulted in a disappointing loss that still
showed some promise. Shahbazyan continued to look sharp in the
early going, only to exhaust himself and get finished in the first
high-level test of his career. Rather than serve as a speed bump
during Shahbazyan’s path upward, the Brunson loss instead served as
an omen for the issues that would dog him throughout the last
decade. Shahbazyan could still look electric for about a round, but
any opponent worth his salt who was able to survive would
eventually get him to crumble. Shahbazyan has obviously put the
work in to resolve those issues, even as he has gone through some
rough patches, and it does appear that it’s starting to pay off.
His June win over Andre
Petroski wasn’t particularly entertaining, but he proved able
to put together three solid rounds, suggesting that an opponent now
at least has to press Shahbazyan before he starts going off the
rails. Muniz is a solid next test, as the Brazilian looks to try
and solve his own issues. Muniz didn’t look like any sort of
potential contender ahead of his UFC debut in 2019. A
one-dimensional submission artist with a questionable gas tank,
“Sergipano” looked to have the type of thin game that would quickly
wash out of the UFC. Even if Muniz was one-dimensional, he turned
out to be quite excellent in that one dimension, reeling off some
impressive submissions as part of a five-fight winning streak to
kick off his UFC career—a run that saw him breaking Ronaldo
Souza’s arm with an armbar. Then Muniz got stifled and
submitted by fellow grappler Brendan
Allen in 2023, and the Brazilian hasn’t recaptured much of his
momentum since. He was able to eke his way to a win against
Jun
Yong Park, but a lot of Muniz’s recent fights have seen him
willing to blink first and refuse to get to his best weapons,
including getting walked down and knocked out by Ikram
Aliskerov in April. Shahbazyan should prove sharp enough to
scare off the Brazilian early, and even if this winds up as a
tedious fight like in his win over Petroski, Muniz does seem like
an opponent who will eventually implode in the face of a consistent
losing effort. The pick is Shahbazyan via second-round
stoppage.
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