UFC 316 star ruined Michael Bisping’s plan for a hometown retirement with knockout that damaged his ‘good eye’

Kelvin Gastelum ended Michael Bisping’s hope of a UFC London retirement with a brutal knockout

Just before gold is on the line at UFC 316, middleweight veteran Kelvin Gastelum will enter the Octagon for the 24th time.

Gastelum will face the charging Joe Pyfer as he looks to record back-to-back wins for the first time in eight years.

The TUF winner last won consecutive fights when he beat Ronaldo Souza in May 2018, six months on from Gastelum’s vicious knockout against Bisping.

The American needed just two and a half minutes to put his British counterpart to sleep. Many suggested that Bisping shouldn’t have accepted such a quick turnaround after his defeat to Georges St-Pierre.

In doing so, ‘The Count’ was left with damage to the eye in which he was not already blind.

“You can’t do it forever, done it for a long time,” Bisping said on his Believe You Me podcast. “Of course, I’ve got issues with my eye. After the Gastelum fight, then I started having issues with my good eye.”

The former middleweight champion fought the latter years of his career one-eyed after suffering a serious injury against Vitor Belfort in 2013.

Bisping had been looking for a farewell fight in 2018, with the target being a showdown with fellow former champion Rashad Evans in London.

But the British fighter ultimately knew that the risks of going completely blind outweighed his desire to retire on home soil.

“That never happened – probably a good thing,” he said. “It ain’t worth it. What else am I going to do? I won the belt. I’ve had tons of wins. I’ve done everything I set out to achieve.”

Kelvin Gastelum has lost six of 10 UFC fights since beating Michael Bisping

Gastelum initially built on his hype in the UFC after knocking out Bisping when he featured in the consensus Fight of the Year for 2019.

In his sole UFC title shot to date, Gastelum pushed Israel Adesanya to the limit in their five-round showdown for the interim middleweight title in Georgia.

But the Californian has struggled since, losing to the likes of Darren Till, Jack Hermansson, and Robert Whittaker before a failed return to welterweight.

Gastelum most recently defeated Daniel Rodriguez, but missing weight took much of the shine away from that result and forced him back to 185 pounds.

While many have written the 33-year-old’s chances of another title run off, Gastelum plans on proving his detractors wrong, starting by stalling the rise of Pyfer at UFC 316.