Sept. 16’s UFC Fight Night 227 Las Vegas card lost one of its protagonists after Kelvin Gastelum suffered an injury in training.
Gastelum (18-8, 1NC; 12-8, 1NC UFC) took to his social media accounts to announce his assignment was off. According to the fighter, he suffered fractures following an elbow strike in training. The Fight Ready representative was scheduled to compete at 170 for the first time since moving up to middleweight in 2016. Gastelum picked up a victory in his latest foray, a unanimous decision win over Chris Curtis at UFC 287, bouncing back after back-to-back defeats at the hands of Robert Whittaker and Jared Cannonier.
“Unfortunate news, my fight with Shavkat Rakhmonov is off. I received an elbow that resulted in an open fracture and a few bones came out fractured. I have to apologize to everybody who was excited about this fight. I apologize to everybody. I apologize to Rakhmonov and his team. I feel bad. I feel very horrible about this unfortunate incident. I’ll be back. I’m still going to continue training. I can still do my strength and conditioning training, movement, I can still do a lot of my training... I asked to move it up to November. Hopefully they will grant me this wish. That will be Nov. 11 in Madison Square Garden. It’s hard to be a Kelvin Gastelum fan sometimes, I know. We go through ups and downs together, but I promise we’re fighting to get back on the horse and get back on that winning streak and continue it.”
It didn’t take long for Rakhmonov (17-0, 5-0 UFC) to reply to his fellow Ultimate Fighting Championship colleague. “Nomad” asked the fight to be rescheduled on the UFC 294 card in Abu Dhabi, implying Gastelum was dodging him. The former M-1 Global champion is coming off a submission victory over Geoff Neal at UFC 285.
“Pinata, I agreed to fight you on your territory on Mexican Independence Day in arena full of your supporters and it’s not my problem you can’t do it now. It’s your turn to accept to fight me on my territory in Abu Dhabi at UFC 294! Or did you realize it was bad idea just now?”
UFC Fight Night 227 is set to go down at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. The headliner will pit Alexa Grasso against former divisional queen Valentina Shevchenko for a rematch with the women’s flyweight championship on the line.
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