Kelvin Gastelum Predicts First-Round KO Of Robert Whittaker at UFC 234

Kelvin Gastelum heads Down Under next month to attempt to dethrone Robert Whittaker for the middleweight belt, and despite marching into the champ’s home ground, he is brimming with confidence.

The 27-year-old Arizona native is feeling confident ahead of his bout against “The Reaper” and comes into the fight with back-to-back victories over former middleweight champion Michael Bisping and grappling ace Ronaldo Souza.

During a media day in Los Angeles on Tuesday, Gastelum said he’s riding high on confidence and predicted a short night for the Aussie next month.

“I’m predicting a first-round knockout,” Gastelum said. “I’ve put in so much work and I feel so confident in my abilities and confident in what I’ve done in the sport that I’m predicting a first-round knockout.”

The middleweight belt has gone through a transitional period changing hands a number of times in recent years since Anderson Silva’s reign ended in 2012 with a number of champions including Chris Weidman, Luke Rockhold, Michael Bisping, Georges St. Pierre and now Whittaker holding the belt since then.

The confident Gastelum also predicted that not only will he take the belt from Whittaker, he will hold onto the belt for a considerable amount of time, restoring the stability of the Silva era.

“You’ve got guys like ‘Borrachinha’ [Paulo Costa] and you’ve got guys like Stylebender [Israel Adesanya], you’ve got Rob Whittaker who is still go going to be in the mix, he’s not going to go anywhere after the fight, you know what I mean?” Gastelum said. “You got Yoel Romero in the mix. The champion of this division has got his work cut out for him in his next few fights and I plan on doing just that, bring a little more legitimacy to the division, you know what I mean? For a while it was GSP, and interim title, and then, so yeah. I want to be able to be the guy who brings legitimacy to the division.”

Gastelum maintains that the fight against Whittaker will be tough given the heart the Aussie showed in both his bouts against Romero but is confident he’ll get the job done.

“I know that if I clip them, anybody, I mean anybody in the world, not just Rob, anybody, when I cut my left hand in, he’s going down,” Gastelum said. “But yeah, Rob has a lot of heart. I’m expecting a hard-fought fight, but at the same time, I’m so prepared for this opportunity that I’m expecting it not to even be close.”

UFC 234 takes place Saturday, Feb. 9, 2019 at Rod Laver Arena in Melbourne, Australia. It is headlined by a pair of middleweight fights: the title scrap between Whittaker and Gastelum and a co-main event featuring rising star Israel Adesanya against former champion Anderson Silva.