Kelvin Gastelum looks to get back in the win column in a division that has gotten even more interesting over the past month.<\/p>\n
Gastelum returns to action this Saturday against Dustin Stoltzfus at Noche UFC in San Antonio. Since his most recent bout at UFC 316 against Joe Pyfer, Dricus du Plessis dropped the middleweight title to Khamzat Chimaev at UFC 319 in August.<\/p>\n
After Nassourdine Imavov\u2018s dominant win at UFC Paris this past Saturday, the hunt for Chimaev\u2019s next opponent is down to three names \u2014 Imavov, and the UFC Vancover headliners Reinier de Ridder and Anthony Hernandez. When asked who could give Chimaev his toughest fight, Gastelum weighed in.<\/p>\n
\u201cMan, I really think RDR is someone to look at as a serious threat,\u201d Gastelum told MMA Fighting. \u201cI think he\u2019s the man that could be the one.<\/p>\n
\u201cHis size, his style is something to deal with, man. I mean, look, when I saw him fight against [Robert] Whitaker, I was blown away, like the size difference. I fought Whittaker and I know how big he is. He made him look like a lightweight.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gastelum hopes to get back on track following his loss to Pyfer, and is happy that chapter of his career is behind him after spending nearly seven months preparing for the Contender Series standout. Pyfer withdrew from the original booking at UFC Mexico the day of the fight, which forced it to get pushed back to UFC 316.<\/p>\n
The middleweight division certainly has a new look with Chimaev as champion. And while it\u2019s been a mixed bag in the MMA community in regards to how people viewed Chimaev\u2019s performance against du Plessis, Gastelum couldn\u2019t have been more impressed.<\/p>\n
In fact, Gastelum decided to bring in somebody who helped Chimaev prepare for his first world title fight for the fianl stretch of his training camp.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust super impressive how dominant that was, right,\u201d Gastelum said. \u201cI mean, his wrestling, nobody\u2019s been able to do that to DDP, and these are some of the best guys that he\u2019s fought \u2014 Izzy, Whittaker, etc. He\u2019s fought the who\u2019s who and nobody\u2019s been able to do what what Khamzat did to DDP and I think the, the difference was the wrestling.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd, actually one of the guys that he had in his camp was Pat Downey, [who] immediately after helping Khamzat came over to my training camp and helped me finish off camp. So that was cool to do. This guy, Pat Downey has been helping a lot of MMA fighters, helping them elevate their grappling game and I think that\u2019s been a difference maker.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kelvin Gastelum looks to get back in the win column in a division that has gotten even more…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":136294,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[49,48,641,701,638,82,640,702,3194],"class_list":["post-136293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-fighting","tag-latest-news","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-ufc","tag-ufc-news","tag-videos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136293","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=136293"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136293\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/136294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=136293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=136293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=136293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}