Kelvin Gastelum vs Shavkat Rakhmonov

Kelvin Gastelum vs. Shavkat Rakhmonov, which was earlier scheduled for September 16 this year, has been cancelled due to the pullout of Kelvin Gastelum owing to an injury he suffered during training. On his Twitter account, he revealed the sad news by posting a video of him getting injured during training, and as per him, he suffered a facial fracture and won’t be fighting Shavkat Rakhmonov in September. Kelvin (31) is moving back to 170lbs after such a long time as he last fought in the welterweight bout in 2016. Since then, he has been fighting in the middleweight division and tasted victory in his last fight against Chris Curtis, whereas Kazak fighter Shavkat Rakhmonov is still to be defeated by someone in his professional MMA career.

Shavkat Rakhmonov is undefeated in his last 5 fights in the UFC and won all his fights by finishing the opponent. The face-off between these two fighters would be a spectators’ delight, but as of now the opponent for “The Nomad” has not been selected by the UFC, and there are speculations that the UFC is planning to book a fight between these two fighters for UFC 294 in Abu Dhabi, but that won’t be possible for the fighter to enter the octagon so quickly. Gastelum requested the UFC to shift this bout to November, but it’s now up to the UFC what they will do.

Unfortunate news. My fight with Shavkat Rakmonov is off. I received an elbow that resulted in an open fracture and a few bones that came out fractured. I have to apologize to everybody. Everybody was excited for this fight. I apologize to Shavkat Rakmonov and his team. I feel bad, I feel very horrible about this unfortunate incident. I’ll be back. I can still do training, my conditioning training. I asked to move it up to November, hopefully they grant me this wish, that will be November 11th in Madison Square Garden. It’s hard to be a Kevin Gastelum fan sometimes I know, we go through ups and down together, I promise we’re fighting to get back on that horse and get back on that winning streak and continue it
Kelvin Gastelum on his video