IF you really want to oversimplify it, Robert Whittaker and Kelvin Gastelum are two welterweights fighting for the world middleweight title. Both started out in the welterweight class and Gastelum was forced to move up seemingly due to his love of food, while Whittaker moved up by choice after a couple of difficult losses. But then if you were one of the “real middleweights”, drying yourself out like a raisin and almost fainting on the scales, only to get the stuffing knocked out of you by the slightly less dehydrated Gastelum and Whittaker, clinging to the idea that they are welterweights isn’t going to take the sting off.
Whittaker is pretty much exclusively the reason that Yoel Romero isn’t seen as the unstoppable middleweight champion of the world right now. The surprising part of Whittaker’s recent run is that he came into the UFC as a generic karate-boxer type fighter. But when he met the monstrous grapplers Ronaldo ‘Jacare’ Souza and Yoel Romero, Whittaker was harder to hold down than a greased pig. He topped it all off by earning his way onto the Australian wrestling squad for the Commonwealth Games, though he had to drop out due to already being incredibly accident prone and the UFC rightly looking at the competition as an opportunity to suffer another horrible injury while no one made any money.
Whittaker’s ability hinges heavily around his ability to give up the back body lock and build up along the fence. Leaning onto the fence with his left side, he will bring his right knee up—barring his opponent from putting either of their legs in as hooks. From there he will try to take an underhook by slotting his elbow back through inside the opponent’s arms and then standing up and turning into them to regain a standing 50/50 or over-under clinch.
Gastelum’s success has come by similar means: he is very hard to keep down. But Gastelum is much more in the habit of performing stand ups and granbys from the traditional wrestler’s base—like a more manly equivalent to the turtle position, with the fighter up on his hands and ready to run for it rather than curled up in a ball and begging to just be left alone. Once he starts getting up, Gastelum will often trap one of his opponent’s hands and trundle through on an arm roll which carries him into top position. You will see perhaps one good sweep from a traditional guard position on any night, but Gastelum will defy logic to hit this arm roll two or three times a fight against bigger men.
On the feet, both men are big fans of a bouncing style of footwork. As in: “bounce, bounce, bounce, ATTACK.” You will often see Whittaker bounce a few times on the balls of his feet before dropping into a sprinter’s stance, up on the ball of his back foot, and then leap forward with a left hook or a high kick. Gastelum tends to hang about at range lazily bouncing just until the moment when his opponent begins to think “Wait, is this really all he’s going to” – and then he bursts in and puts his fist through their train of thought.
That change of rhythm is a real killer for Gastelum. Where Whittaker is a multi-tooled striker, Gastelum leans almost exclusively on the one-two. It is the oldest combination in the book—in fact some would be reluctant to even call it a combination—but it is Gastelum’s manipulation of the details that makes him so effective. Cut an angle to the left or right and it becomes a different one-two. Change up the timing, play it off feints, hit it on the lead, hit it on the counter, double up in quick succession. It is this manipulation of the intangibles that makes Gastelum’s use of those otherwise bland basics so successful.
Perhaps the most important point in this fight is that Gastelum isn’t Yoel Romero. That might have you calling up your mortgage firm in order to bet the house on Whittaker but hold on just a second. Yes, he isn’t an ageless Cuban superman, but Gastelum also isn’t going to make one or two big attempts a round and then take the rest of the round off. Gastelum’s success has come from being in perpetual motion whether he is the aggressor or the target. The intrigue in this match comes from Whittaker’s own defensive flaws. He has already proven himself among the best to ever compete in the UFC, but has been hurt and wobbled along the way. Kelvin Gastelum might not be as terrifying as Yoel Romero, but he generally keeps the pressure on much more effectively when he has his man hurt—never crowding his own punches or exhausting himself in the process.
Yet on the other hand, many of Gastelum’s opponents have been far from their best days. Johnny Hendricks was well into his nose-dive of a decline. Tim Kennedy hadn’t fought in two years and promptly retired after Gastelum beat him. Vitor Belfort had been knocked out in three of his last four fights and looked like a deflated balloon. And then Michael Bisping had been pretty much knocked out by Georges St. Pierre just 19 days before he fought Gastelum. When Johnny Hendricks is keeping the average age of your last six opponents under 37, you might be beating up old men.
For Whittaker, his best bet is likely to control the position of Gastelum’s lead leg. Gastelum needs to get in to do his left-handed hitting and his lead leg controls that range. Because Gastelum stands almost on a tightrope, even short lead leg kicks to the calf had a good chance of breaking his balance and allowing Whittaker to step in with strikes behind them. Whittaker’s old foe, Romero is a proponent of this technique.
The side kick to the lead knee that Whittaker took from Romero could also be useful in this regard. And the front kick to the body—often delivered with the heel while leaping in—could certainly find a home against Gastelum as Chris Weidman was frustrating Gastelum with front kicks to the body all throughout their fight.
For Gastelum, pressure is what is expected of him. It might be interesting to see mix it up and actually stand at a longer range. That might sound strange but Gastelum’s punching range is going to be Whittaker’s concern for most of the night, while Whittaker will be keen to use all of his weapons. If Gastelum lingers out in kicking range apparently not threatening an immediate one-two, he might be able to draw kicks out more predictably from Whittaker and then either parry and step in through the wake, or step straight in and land the left straight as Whittaker is on one leg. In dealing with Whittaker’s multi-faceted striking arsenal, he might be able to make Whittaker more predictable by holding Whittaker at a range that is, on paper, supposed to be his to own.
That being said, pressure has always been Kelvin’s favourite strategy and you can’t argue with where it has placed him, so it is probably best to expect that from the get go, and a slow build up of output into the second and third rounds. And keep in mind throughout this that the likely next opponent for both is the striking savant, Israel Adesanya… so either man could surprise us and get an early start on the wrestling practice.
A £10 bet on Whittaker to beat Gastelum returns £14.20
