Only 21 days after losing his UFC Middleweight Championship, Michael Bisping will step back into the cage, this time to take on Kelvin Gastelumn. The original matchup was supposed to be Anderson Spider Silva versus Gaselumn, but that was pulled after Anderson once again failed an out of competition drug test stemming from a sample collected on October 26 and as a result had been pulled from the card.
Perhaps the fight with Silva and Gastelumn is simply not meant to happen as this was the second time it had big planned, then canceled. The pairing was previously scheduled to meet in June 2017 at UFC 212. However, Gastelum was pulled from the bout after he tested positive for Carboxy-Tetrahydrocannabinol (Carboxy-THC) which is a metabolite of marijuana or hashish above the 180 ng/mL allowance by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) standard.
If you’re wondering how Bisping is able to fight so soon after taking a beating to GSP, Bisping was serving a medical suspension issued by NYSAC, but as China isn’t under the purview of the Association of Boxing Commissions, he was allowed to fight. It has been almost a year since Gastelumn captured a victory. His last clean win was over Tim Kennedy in December of last year. Since then he had a win over Belfort overturned as he got busted for smoking pot.
Then, coming off suspension he was choked out by Chris Weidman. The once very promising career of Gastelumn is now looking shaky, no thanks to anyone but himself for those circumstances.
Gastelumn is no joke despite the drama, before everything started coming apart, he was 13-2 and 8-2 in the UFC.
He has all the natural skills and conditioning to do some serious damage and make a long run at Middleweight. Standing in his way is the angry ex-champion, who is still trying to figure out how he was beaten so badly by a guy in GSP who hadn’t fought in 4 years. The tape on Bisping is a mile long, but the bottom line remains he wins the fights no one thinks he will, and then loses the fights no one can figure out he did.
With all that being said, and the cards out on the table, here are my quick predicts for the main card.
Gastelumn over Bisping by Decision
Alex Garcia over Muslim Salikhov by Decision
Wang Guan over Alex Caceres by KO
Li Jingliang over Zak Ottow by submission
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