Kelvin Gastelum Was Hospitalized Before UFC 183 Weigh-Ins
UFC 183 managed to have one of the most bizarre weigh-ins in the promotion’s long history. Jaws hit the floor when ‘flyweight’ contender John Lineker managed to get off the scales at 130lbs., that’s four pounds over the limit of the 125lb. division. It seems “Hands Of Stone” is simply too big for the flyweight division, and slightly too short for the bantamweight category.
The weigh-ins took an even stranger turn when The Ultimate Fighter (TUF) 17 winner Kelvin Gastelum took to the scales. He looked obviously dishevelled, and weighed in at a whopping 180 pounds, a staggering nine pounds above the welterweight limit. So what happened? Well, according to Gastelum’s coach Chance Farrar, “Mini Cain” has been in hospital with his weight cut:
“He wasn’t vomiting food,” Farrar told MMAFighting.com. “It was more like mucus. He was in a bad state where he couldn’t get himself off the floor. I had to pick him up. I was scared, I’ve never had an athlete do that before. That’s the long and short of it.”
“I was thinking the fight was off. There’s no way this guy is fighting, it’s done. … That was kind of the attitude. Maybe it was a little bit quick to the make the decision, but that’s how I felt at the time.”
Farrar, a former WEC (World Extreme Cagefighting) competitor would have been well within his rights to pull Gastelum from the fight, and also revealed that he had to take his fighter to the hospital, so why is he continuing if he likely will be less than 100 percent?
“I’m not saying it was an easy weight cut, it never is,” Farrar said. “But it was going as well as it could until that happened. People can say what they want, but that’s the only difference in my book for this weight cut.”
“I always leave these decisions up to Kelvin,” Farrar said. “I’m a coach. Of course, I’m a support system. Do I think that he’s 100 percent? I do not, no. Do I think that he’ll do great and that he’s capable of winning the fight? Absolutely. He’ll come to fight.”
Farrar was then asked whether he thought the UFC pressured Kelvin Gastelum in to fighting after his illness:
“My impression could lean toward that, but again, I didn’t hear any of the discussions,” Farrar said. “It’s hearsay. I can’t really say.”
“Kelvin wasn’t feeling well in the front end of the week,” Farrar said. “That’s one of the reasons he was a little heavy at the front end of the week. But ultimately we felt like the weight cut was going fine. Everything was going good. We used different stimuli. He was consistently losing weight.”
There you have it, “Mini Cain” is lucky (?) to still be competing against Tyron Woodley at UFC 183 following a ‘scary’ bout of vomiting and illness during his weight cut period. He can easily be forgiven for missing weight by such a huge margin, but will he lose his undefeated status against “The Chosen One” tonight?
