Kelvin Gastelum Was “Dumbfounded” By Dana White’s Post-UFC 225 Comments

For Kelvin Gastelum, UFC President Dana White’s comments about him after UFC 225 came out of left field. The main event of UFC 225 was scheduled to be a middleweight title fight between Robert Whittaker and Yoel Romero. Unfortunately Romero misse…

For Kelvin Gastelum, UFC President Dana White’s comments about him after UFC 225 came out of left field. The main event of UFC 225 was scheduled to be a middleweight title fight between Robert Whittaker and Yoel Romero. Unfortunately Romero missed weight and the fight was no longer for the title, becoming a five round […]

The post Kelvin Gastelum Was “Dumbfounded” By Dana White’s Post-UFC 225 Comments appeared first on MMA News.

Kelvin Gastelum Reacts To Dana White’s Post-UFC 225 Comments

That could be the last title opportunity Kelvin Gastelum gets in a while.

The post Kelvin Gastelum Reacts To Dana White’s Post-UFC 225 Comments appeared first on LowKickMMA.com.

Kelvin Gastelum was “dumbfounded” by UFC President Dana White’s comments after UFC 225.

The pay-per-view’s (PPV) main event was tarnished after Yoel Romero failed to make weight for his championship contest against Robert Whittaker. White would’ve liked Gastelum, who was in Chicago for the card, to have stepped in for the opportunity.

Instead White suggested that Gastelum was unable to do so due to “personal issues.” White seemed extremely agitated by this and said Gastelum needed to get these issues sorted out.

On today’s (Mon. June 25, 2018) edition of The MMA Hour with new host Luke Thomas, Gastelum offered his reaction to White’s post-UFC 225 comments.

Gastelum said that he was “dumbfounded” when he heard what the UFC boss had said (quotes via MMA Fighting):

“I was dumbfounded,” Gastelum said. “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.”

Romero would continue on in the main event in a non-title fight that went all five rounds. A case could’ve been made that the Cuban earned the victory, however, the judges’ scorecards told a different story as the Aussie champ left Chicago still middleweight king on the better end of a split decision.

Gastelum did admit that he was in negotiations with the UFC to be the backup for the fight between Whittaker and Romero, but those talks fell through:

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

It seems the week of UFC 225 promotion officials contacted Gastelum that Wednesday about potentially replacing Romero. Apparently there were already doubts about The Soldier Of God making it to fight night.

At that point, however, Gastelum’s diet was too far off. He had been consuming alcohol and eating in Mexico while foregoing any sort of training for a fight. The former Ultimate Fighter winner weighed between 200 and 205 pounds and was not confident he could make 185 pounds in a healthy manner by fight night:

“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,’” Gastelum said. … “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.”

As far as White’s comments, Gastelum would like to sit down with him and hash out their differences:

“I would love to sit down and see what those comments are about,” Gastelum said. “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.”

The post Kelvin Gastelum Reacts To Dana White’s Post-UFC 225 Comments appeared first on LowKickMMA.com.

Colby Covington Delivers Warning To ‘Two-Pump Chump’ Tyron Woodley

Colby Covington has a new set of insults for Tyron Woodley:

The post Colby Covington Delivers Warning To ‘Two-Pump Chump’ Tyron Woodley appeared first on LowKickMMA.com.

It’s not official yet, but the overwhelming belief is that UFC welterweight champion Tyron Woodley will return soon for a grudge match with newly crowned interim UFC welterweight champion Colby Covington in the very near future.

The two former training partners have already begun trading blows – and it hasn’t been pretty – in the mere moments after Covington won the placeholder strap in a five-round decision win over Rafael dos Anjos at June 9’s UFC 225, so the fight now has a preinstalled trash talk war to build on their already bad blood-filled history as (sort of) teammates at American Top Team (ATT).

It’s gotten so bad, so fast that Woodley has claimed he wants to get ‘banned from the UFC’ and has already brought Covington’s family into the mix, but to fair, any and all topics are open season for ‘Chaos’ in his seemingly never-ending, scripted trash talk vignettes that may or may not be working to actually get him the following he clearly so desires.

Just that was recently the case for Covington, who spoke up even more about his new archrival on The MMA Hour, poking fun at Woodley’s rap album and acting career while calling him his trademark “TyQuil” insult for the perceived boringness of his fights. Despite an overarching penchant for winning fights on the scorecards, Covington promised to put the champ to sleep for good:

“Tyquil, there’s nowhere else to run,” Covington said. “There’s nowhere else to hide. What you gonna do now? No more rap albums. I know all the people hate me, but if you really want to hate me, go look on Google and try to listen to this dude rap. That’s why he’s trying to come fight. That’s why he’s begging to fight me now, because his rap album is failing. He’s got baby mamas to pay. That dude is a joke, man. His B-list acting career that goes straight to DVD, it is no more. Don’t worry, Tyquil. I’m sending you to sleep for good, motherf*cker.”

The interim champion insists he’s cocksure about the outcome of their pending match-up based on their history of training together at ATT, sessions which Covington claims Woodley quit due to the sheer amount of oxygen required to sustain his massively muscled frame:

“Every single round, every single time,” Covington said. “He literally never took one round off me. First round, he would be so tired trying to get oxygen to those muscles. The second round would just be easy pickings to me. I would pick him apart, do whatever I want to him. That’s the real reason he never wanted to talk to me again, after I gave him enough beatings. He was like, ‘Nah, I’m not doing this anymore.’”

But as for “The Chosen One’s” trash talk, Covington said he doesn’t see any of it. If the champion truly wants to bring some smack talk his way, he said, he can unblock him on social media after he supposedly shut him off and say it to his face:

“I don’t see anything he says,” Covington said. “Anything he says is fake news. He just tries to come out in the media, he’s trying to steal my spotlight. He knows I’m the real world champ. He’s got that fool’s gold at home. If he has something to say, he can say it to my face or unblock me and say it to me and let me see it, like a real man.”

Finally, Covington used an insult that only “Chaos” could before proclaiming Woodley wouldn’t last the distance when they did fight:

“He’s a little two-pump chump,” Covington said. “He won’t last more than two rounds.”

The post Colby Covington Delivers Warning To ‘Two-Pump Chump’ Tyron Woodley appeared first on LowKickMMA.com.

Robert Whittaker Questions Yoel Romero’s ‘Superhuman’ Recovery Before UFC 225

What could Robert Whittaker be implying here?

The post Robert Whittaker Questions Yoel Romero’s ‘Superhuman’ Recovery Before UFC 225 appeared first on LowKickMMA.com.

UFC middleweight champion Robert Whittaker has bested Yoel Romero twice now, and he has noticed a big difference between their two fights.

The pair initially met back in July of last year when Whittaker defeated Romero via unanimous decision to capture the interim 185-pound championship. He was later promoted to undisputed champion when Georges St-Pierre forfeited his claim to the throne, citing medical issues.

Nearly a year later, Whittaker and Romero rematched in the main event of the UFC 225 pay-per-view (PPV) earlier this month. The bout was initially scheduled to be Whittaker’s first title defense, however, the Cuban missed weight and the bout was no longer a title fight.

It was a hard-fought 25 minutes between Romero and Whittaker, with Whittaker nearly being finished on several occasions. In the end, Whittaker got the job done on the judges’ scorecards with a split decision.

Whittaker recently did an interview on GrangeTV to discuss his UFC 225 fight with Romero. The Aussie revealed that Romero’s body felt like metal whenever he’d strike him. Whittaker seems to find this suspicious given that Romero didn’t feel like that a year ago when they first fought (quotes via MMA Mania):

“Whatever he’s hydrating on, I would like to know so I can also hydrate on that because it turns you superhuman, just about. When I was punching and kicking him he felt like metal — like a dude made out of concrete, it was a ridiculous. I fought him a year ago, and he didn’t feel like concrete.

“Not like that. He’s a tough guy, and like I said before, he’s a top-caliber athlete. But for him to come back the way he did, and for him to feel so differently and to perform so differently than he did a year ago — ‘cause let’s not forget, I have fought him before.

“I’ve experienced his shots, I’ve experienced landing shots on him, I’ve experience fighting him before. For him to make those changes physically and athletically, in a year, at the age of 41… I’m leaving that down to nothing more than magic.”

The post Robert Whittaker Questions Yoel Romero’s ‘Superhuman’ Recovery Before UFC 225 appeared first on LowKickMMA.com.

Whittaker: No Special Diet Makes Romero Perform Like That

UFC 225 featured an instant classic between reigning undisputed middleweight champion Robert Whittaker and perennial middleweight contender Yoel Romero. With a controversial split-decision victory over Romero, Robert Whittaker now owns two victories ov…

UFC 225 featured an instant classic between reigning undisputed middleweight champion Robert Whittaker and perennial middleweight contender Yoel Romero. With a controversial split-decision victory over Romero, Robert Whittaker now owns two victories over Yoel Romero, providing the only two losses on the Soldier of God’s UFC résumé. Following Whittaker’s first successful title defense, he spoke […]

The post Whittaker: No Special Diet Makes Romero Perform Like That appeared first on MMA News.

Rafael dos Anjos Undergoes Ear Surgery Following UFC 225

Aside from suffering a loss, Rafael dos Anjos didn’t exit UFC 225 unscathed:

The post Rafael dos Anjos Undergoes Ear Surgery Following UFC 225 appeared first on LowKickMMA.com.

Earlier this month (June 9, 2018), Rafael dos Anjos dropped a unanimous decision loss to Colby Covington in an interim welterweight title fight at UFC 225 at the United Center in Chicago.

During the fight, dos Anjos suffered what has now been revealed to be quite a serious cut on his ear, which was stitched immediately after the fight. According to MMAFighting.com, however, the issue has been a recurring one and this time around, dos Anjos even felt as if his ear could potentially fall off. With that being said, the Brazilian elected to have plastic surgery to fix the issue once and for all. 

Check out this photo he posted to his official Instagram account below:

Prior to his loss to Covington, dos Anjos, a former lightweight champion, had won three consecutive bouts since moving up to 170 pounds last year.

It’s expected that dos Anjos will be cleared to return to sparring in six weeks.

The post Rafael dos Anjos Undergoes Ear Surgery Following UFC 225 appeared first on LowKickMMA.com.