Kelvin Gastelum News

Drake Riggs - February 22, 2018

The Ultimate Fighter season 17 winner, Kelvin Gastelum may have just got the title eliminator he was looking for. The UFC announced on Thursday that a huge middleweight fight will be taking place at UFC 224 on May 12 in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil as the countryman, Ronaldo “Jacare” Souza returns home to defend his turf against one of the best young rising stars in MMA, Kelvin Gastelum.

Drake Riggs - February 15, 2018

No one expected the youngest man in The Ultimate Fighter house on season 17 to end up winning the whole show. In fact, that guy was the underdog in all of his fights. Yet Kelvin Gastelum won them all and continues to look like one of the best young fighters in MMA today. Gastelum won TUF 17 as a middleweight but would drop to welterweight immediately after. He would miss weight twice in five fights before going back up to middleweight, but that stay at 185 would not last. Gastelum would fight once against Nate Marquardt then drop back down to 170 for two more fights before now having his last four all at middleweight.

Justin Golightly - January 26, 2018

The middleweight division was just on the verge of reaching a relatively normal state of affairs and then an injury sent it right back into chaos. Georges St-Pierre bowed out of the division and left his new title behind. Whittaker was promoted to the undisputed champion but had to pull out of his first defense. Yoel Romero was immediately booked into Whittaker’s fight with Luke Rockhold and it was changed into an interim title bout. If you’re confused, don’t worry, Kelvin Gastelum is too. He thought he was a shoe-in for the shot after his performance at UFC Shanghai, but the UFC had other plans. “It does bother me a little bit that I haven’t even been considered for a shot, but it is what it is, I know this is a process, and I’m just dealing with the process. What I do think set me back was Robert Whittaker getting hurt and them making that match-up for the interim [middleweight] belt. That sets every middleweight back, because the winner is going to have to fight Whittaker. It’s just going to have to be a process for anyone to get a title shot.” — Kelvin Gastelum speaking to MMA Junkie.

Tom Taylor - January 24, 2018

Kelvin Gastelum has enjoyed a pretty solid run since rejoining the UFC middleweight division. His latest middleweight run began with a decisive defeat of Tim Kennedy. Next, he smashed Vitor Belfort to a first-round TKO – though this win was overturned when he tested positive for marijuana metabolites. From there, he had his momentum halted by a submission loss to Chris Weidman, yet he recently rebounded from that loss with perhaps the best win of his career: a first-round knockout of former UFC middleweight champ Michael Bisping.

Justin Golightly - December 9, 2017

Once it was announced that Luke Rockhold was fighting Robert Whittaker in Perth for the middleweight title, Kelvin Gastelum took to social media to voice his opinion and declare that he thought he was worthy of the shot. While it’d be easy to see Gastelum sitting on the sidelines waiting to see how that fight played out, it looks like he was offered a big fight with Yoel Romero to headline an early 2018 Brazilian card. According to Romero’s manager, the fight was turned down by Gastelum. It appears that this was the planned main event for #UFCBelem, Brazil on February the 3rd. https://t.co/O7duyUMv5v

Justin Golightly - December 9, 2017

It didn’t take Nostradamus to predict that Kelvin Gastelum wasn’t going to like Luke Rockhold getting the title shot against Robert Whittaker. The next day after Georges St-Pierre announced he was leaving the middleweight division, the title was vacated and the UFC made Rockhold’s fight in Perth with Whittaker for the undisputed belt. Gastelum felt like he deserved it after knocking out Michael Bisping, who just carried the title a month ago, and has been pleading his case over social media ever since. “I knew Luke Rockhold and I were both in the front-running for this fight. I was then told Robert Whittaker wanted the tougher fight and he picked Rockhold. In my opinion that is the easier fight because I feel I’m the toughest fight for anyone in this division. I think Whittaker took the easier fight by going with Luke. He’s absolutely worried about me and for good reason. He and I have trained together in the past and know what the other is all about. We know what the other brings to the table.”

Justin Golightly - December 6, 2017

The news is still as fresh as the Christmas trees your neighbors are probably already putting up: Luke Rockhold is slated to fight interim UFC middleweight champion Robert Whittaker at UFC 221 in Perth, Australia. That is sure to make Rockhold happy after his divisional criticisms, but it definitely isn’t the news Kelvin Gastelum wanted. He just knocked out the former champion Michael Bisping, which he felt granted him at least a shot at the interim belt holder if Georges St-Pierre isn’t sure of his next move. He took to Twitter to express this as soon as the news was dropped. 👎👎👎👎👎 fart noise * https://t.co/KwomUMoO6m

Justin Golightly - December 6, 2017

We all know how the story went. Michael Bisping tore up Georges St-Pierre in the former welterweight king’s triumphant return to the UFC, but in the end Bisping was submitted and lost his middleweight title. Eager to get the bad taste of a loss out of his mouth, he accepted a short-notice fight against Kelvin Gastelum and got knocked out. The former champ hasn’t shied away from the spotlight since his back-t0-back losses, but his latest podcast is the most in-depth he’s talked about what went down. In hindsight, the man admits it may have been the wrong move. “It didn’t go my way, as everybody knows and saw. I felt great going into that fight, I did. Looking back in hindsight, was I overtrained and emotionally and physically tired? Yes I was, but the problem with having a f-cking huge ego and thinking you can still beat people is that I knew that but I still thought I could beat Kelvin Gastelum. Not taking anything away from him. He caught me with a beautiful left hook that put me down. God bless him. It was a big gamble, it didn’t pay off. Had it paid off it would have been great but that’s what you do. You roll the dice, you give it a shot, and you hope for the best, and the best man, I guess that was Kelvin so well done to him. “That fight was me trying to exorcise some inner demons and try and get back in the win column ASAP. As I said, it was a huge gamble and for many reasons it was the wrong move, but I don’t regret it. If you look at the grand scheme of things […] I can see that it was the wrong move, but at the time it felt right, so I don’t regret it.”

Tom Taylor - November 29, 2017

Chael Sonnen is very familiar with rising UFC middleweight contender Kelvin Gastelum, having coached him on season 17 of The Ultimate Fighter. That said, Sonnen claims that for a long time, he couldn’t actually identify the one thing that made Gastelum so good. While it was clear the young fighter had few weaknesses, his true strength was difficult to identify. “I would watch him every day in practice,” Sonnen said in the latest episode of Beyond the Fight. “I would tell him, ‘Kelvin, I don’t know what it is you’re good at, but I also don’t know what your weaknesses are.’ He was just naturally in very, very good position. He naturally would follow the basics. Hands up, chin down. He naturally was a little bit shorter for the weight class, and it was harder for guys to get underneath him. He naturally just didn’t mind pushing the pace and competing, which is a really big part of it. It’s not just the punches and the kicks. You’ve got to have a competitor, man, you’ve got have a guy who’s got some dog inside of him. He just had all of these things. But I just kept telling him that, and it almost turned into a laughable moment. I’d keep saying that, every time he’d fight, and I was congratulating him, but I’d say ‘man, I’m not positive what it is you’re good at. I just sure can’t find your weakness.’ The guy was impossible to submit, so hard to take down, wouldn’t give up, powerful hands, buried his chin so he could take a shot…”

Chris Taylor - November 25, 2017

Michael Bisping suffered his second stoppage loss in the past three weeks earlier today at UFC Fight Night 122 in Shanghai, China. “The Count” took on surging division contender Kelvin Gastelum in today’s main event but unfortunately lost the contest via first-round knockout.

Chris Taylor - November 25, 2017

Kelvin Gastelum scored arguably the biggest win of his mixed martial arts career earlier today in Shanghai when he defeated former UFC middleweight champion Michael Bisping via first-round knockout. Gastelum was able to land a huge left hand that sent “The Count” crashing to the canvas and quickly put an end to the fight.

Justin Golightly - November 25, 2017

While most of us slept off our second helping of Thanksgiving, Kelvin Gastelum was in Shanghai, China earning the biggest win of his entire career. It only took him a single round to take out Michael Bisping, who was coming off a super quick turnaround from UFC 217’s loss to Georges St-Pierre. Gastelum wasted no time at all declaring exactly what he wanted this win to propel him towards: The UFC middleweight title. With St-Pierre’s next fight up in the air, Gastelum set his sights on a fight with Robert Whittaker in Perth. Flush.#UFCShanghai pic.twitter.com/10gMesZuwB

Justin Golightly - November 24, 2017

Today at the weigh-ins for UFC Shanghai, Kelvin Gastelum missed weight on his first attempt. Don’t worry, he was able to weigh at 186lbs for his middleweight fight with Michael Bisping tomorrow on his second trip to the scale. However, it’s ironically not the weight that everyone is focused on. We aren’t passing any judgments, but unless it’s some sort of optical illusion, Kelvin Gastelum seems to have grabbed onto the towel on his initial attempt and tugged at it. He still missed weight by a pound so it doesn’t even matter, but still, it looked like he was taking a page out of Daniel Cormier’s book.

Justin Golightly - November 18, 2017

Eager to get the bad taste of his loss to Georges St-Pierre out of his mouth, Michael Bisping jumped at the chance to replace Anderson Silva’s spot against Kelvin Gastelum. He has stated that he’ll be retiring in England next year, but decided to squeeze one more in there. Despite ultimately being finished by St-Pierre, Bisping’s coach goes on record saying he think Gastelum is a tougher fight. “Really, Kelvin [Gastelum] is, in my opinion, on the feet, a tougher fight than Georges St-Pierre. It’s not like Mike’s a guy that shoots and wrestles all the time so obviously it’s gonna be a lot of stand up fighting and this guy’s a bigger threat than I think that even Georges was. This guy’s got a different mind frame. Is it gonna hurt or help him? We’re gonna’ find out. You can look at it both ways. I’m looking that it’s a good thing that Michael wants to do. It’s something that he’s very happy about the decision that he made to do this, so we’ve got to ride that positive mind into this fight and hope for the best.”

Justin Golightly - November 18, 2017

Kelvin Gastelum was originally supposed to fight the legend Anderson Silva in the main even of UFC Shanghai, but Silva’s flagging by USADA took away that opportunity. Luckily, perhaps an even more high profile match-up landed in Gastelum’s lap. Michael Bisping wanted to bounce right back from his loss to Georges St-Pierre at UFC 217, so he offered to step up short notice against the middleweight contender. Gastelum feels like a possible win over Bisping could finally get him close to the gold belt. “Yes. If I win this fight [with Michael Bisping], it will put me up high in the rankings and hopefully in the conversations to fight for the title. That’s ultimately my goal. I feel like if I win this fight then I might have tarnished those plans and I might’ve just permanently put myself in the position where I’ll be fighting for the middleweight title. If I get to fight for the middleweight title, then that’s ideal but I also feel like if I do the right things and I’m able to make the 170 safely and healthy, then I can do it and I want to fight for that title too.” — Kelvin Gastelum speaking on the UFC Shanghai conference call. 

Justin Golightly - November 18, 2017

Jorge Masvidal does not like Michael Bisping. Like, at all. It’s not just the trash talk that gets under Masvidal’s skin, whatever bad feelings he may have had toward the former UFC middleweight champion were magnified tenfold after Bisping desecrated the Cuban flag cageside. Combined with his friendship with Yoel Romero, this makes any situation volatile, as we saw when the two nearly came to blows recently. It’s all those reasons why Masvidal is willing to fight Bisping as a replacement if somehow Kelvin Gastelum can’t make it. “I think if Kelvin Gastelum doesn’t make weight, I’ll step right in. That’s what I like to do. I like to fight, so if that happens, if you know, I’m going to be praying that Gastelum eats too much dessert or something. I think [Michael] Bisping will win. Even though I don’t like him too much as a person, I think Bisping will win. Me personally, I just don’t like Bisping because we’ve had problems in real life, I just don’t like. If I could fight him in the Whole Foods parking lot I would. Any Aussie super market. I would fight that guy for a parking spot, that’s how much I don’t like him.” — Jorge Masvidal speaking at the UFC Sydney Q & A. 

Tom Taylor - November 13, 2017

If things had gone according to plan, the UFC’s November 26 debut in Shanghai, China, would have been headlined by a middleweight scrap between former champion Anderson Silva and dangerous contender Kelvin Gastelum. Regrettably, a potential USADA violation recently forced Silva out of this planned contest, leaving the UFC with mere weeks to find a replacement opponent for Gastelum. Enter Michael Bisping who, until UFC 217 earlier this month, owned the UFC middleweight crown. Just weeks after losing his title to resurgent former welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre, Bisping stepped up to replace Silva, saving the UFC’s debut in the largely untapped stronghold of mainland China.

Chris Taylor - November 11, 2017

Perennial UFC middleweight contender Kelvin Gastelum has received a new opponent for UFC Shanghai. Not even a full week after losing his UFC middleweight title to Georges St-Pierre via third-round stoppage, Michael “The Count” Bisping has agreed to fight Kelvin Gastelum in the main event of UFC Shanghai in just two weeks time. MMAFighting’s Ariel Helwani just broke the news.