A middleweight fight between Anderson Silva and Kelvin Gastelum is believed to have been targeted of a UFC Fight Night event in Shanghai, China on November 25th.
The fight had originally been scheduled to take place at UFC 212 earlier this year, but the fight fell through due to Gastelum having to serve a short suspension after testing positive for marijuna metabolites after his previous fight.
The UFC then attempted several times to find an alternative opponent for the former middleweight kingpin, but Silva became disgruntled and pulled out of the event after they refused to allow him to fight Yoel Romero for the interim title instead.
The 42-year-old Silva is coming off a controversial unanimous decision victory over Derek Brunson back in February, which brought an end to a five-fight stint in which he failed to register a victory.
Along the way he had suffered KO and TKO losses to Chris Weidman, had a victory over Nick Diaz overturned due to testing positive for steroids, suffered a major upset loss to Michael Bisping and was outgrappled in a short notice non-title fight with the 205lb champion at the time, Daniel Cormier.
It’s a far cry from Silva’s form before this rough patch, in which he remained undefeated in the Octagon for seven years, but even now his desire to compete remains.
This will be a tough fight for him however, even though Gastelum is coming off a submission loss to Chris Weidman last time out.
Prior to that, Gastelum had been in terrific form, defeating former welterweight champion Johny Hendricks, before moving up to middleweight to earn a TKO victory over Tim Kennedy, and then another against Vitor Belfort, which was later amended to a no-contest due to his positive marijauna test.
