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Today marks the first anniversary of 2019's UFC Fight of the Year - an all guns blazing, five-round thriller between Kelvin Gastelum and reigning UFC middleweight champion, Israel Adesanya in the headliner of UFC 236.
The fight is widely regarded as one of the greatest fights in UFC history. And though it is a satisfying feeling to have been part of a fight that is now forever etched into UFC folklore, Gastelum is still haunted by the nightmares from that night.
He was ever so close to the much-coveted UFC gold he's been busting his guts in the gym for years now, and he's yet so far. In a recent interaction with MMA Junkie, while looking back at the night, Gastelum revealed that it still pains him to imagine how close he was to becoming a champion.
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“I’m very proud of the effort that I put in that fight and what we did in that fight because I got to do a lot of things that I haven’t been able to do in a lot of other fights. At the same time though, this is not why I got into the sport, to say and look back, ‘I almost did it. I was this close.’ It burns my heart and soul to know I was that close, and I just won’t let it happen again.”
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Gastelum remained sidelined due to injury for a while. Now, he has to work his way back to the pinnacle of the middleweight division where top-ranked fighters like former champion Robert Whittaker and Darren Till are already scheduled to fight each other. Gastelum is no stranger to Till because the latter beat him on his middleweight debut.
With Whittaker already booked, Gastelum has now set his sights on a fight against knockout artist Jared Cannonier or the man Cannonier knocked out in the headliner of UFC Fight Night 160, Jack 'The Joker' Hermansson.
“I don’t know. There’s a couple options. I just don’t know who the matchmakers would want me to match up with for the next fight, but I mean, I’m hoping for anybody: Robert Whittaker, Jared Cannonier, Jack Hermansson.”
