Kelvin Gastelum confused by Dana White’s comments at UFC 225

Despite all the great action we witnessed at UFC 225, in the post-fight press conference it seemed like an off night for the boss-man, Dana White.

Not in terms of the event going badly, but when it came to the rather unusual responses he gave out when answering questions from the media.

Yes, it seems kind of silly to imagine anything that White says as ‘unusual’ but lately, he seems to be spewing more and more lies than ever before. Just to put it bluntly.

Two easy examples are that he said that Brad Tavares was out of his main event bout with Israel Adesanya that takes place next month. This is not true as Tavares himself made it clear soon after that he’s ‘100 percent’ still fighting.

The other example being his claims that many of fighters have come to him asking to change the weigh-ins back to the afternoons all while the public noise has suggested otherwise.

At the UFC 225 presser earlier this month, after the scare of losing Yoel Romero in the main event due to his weight missing, the likely replacement appeared to be Kelvin Gastelum who attended the event.

White said that he was the backup plan but however had ‘personal issues’ that he needed to take care of resulting in him not being able to fill in if needed. Gastelum spoke on the MMA Hour today and expressed his confusion after hearing his boss’ claims.

“I was dumbfounded. Because I don’t know where those comments are coming from. I just figured he was upset over me not taking the fight a day-and-a-half before.

My manager was negotiating money to get from that. I wasn’t gonna be doing it for free. That fell through. So they told me that’s not happening.

I looked down at my belly and I’m like, ‘No, I don’t think I can do this in a day and a half,’ *laughs*. In a day and a half’s notice, while I’ve been out drinking and eating, I probably would have been in the hospital if I would have tried that.”

Even now, Gastelum is still unsure of what White meant with his comments. And that’s something that The Ultimate Fighter season 17 winner would like to get some clarity on.

“I would love to sit down and see what those comments are about. I just haven’t reached out to him about it. Eventually, I want to sit down with him and talk to him and meet with him and see what the future holds.”

on 6/25/2018.