It seems that Alexander Gustafsson is not ready to call time on his career just yet as he’s now agreed to fight Ovince Saint Preux at UFC 282 on December 10th in Las Vegas.
There was an air of expectation that the 35-year-old former light-heavyweight champion may hang up his gloves after after his latest comeback resulted in a 67 KO loss against Nikita Krylov in July.
That had marked Gustafsson’s fourth loss in a row over the past five years, starting with an unsuccessful attempt to win the title from Jon Jones in their rematch back in 2018, which he lost by KO.
Six months later he was submitted by Anthony Smith and it’d be a year before he would be seen again, this time moving up to heavyweight, where he was submitted by Fabricio Werdum in the first round, leading to a two year break before his most recent KO loss to Krylov.
As for the 39-year-old Saint Preux, he’s coming off a split decision win over Mauricio ‘Shogun’ Rua back in May, but before that he was having a tough time of it in the Octagon, as evidenced by the fact that over roughly the same time frame that Gustafsson had gone 0-4, OSP had gone just 3-5.
Like Gustafsson, OSP unsuccessfully tried his hand at heavyweight, losing by split decision to Ben Rothwell and being KO’d by Tanner Boser lat year, while in 2020 he was also TKO’d by Jamahal Hill back at 205lbs.
Gustafsson vs. OSP joins a UFC 282 card that is expected to be headlined by a light-heavyweight title rematch between Jiri Prochazka and Glover Teixeira, while Jan Blachowicz vs. Magomed Ankalaev, Robbie Lawler vs. Santiago Ponzinibbio and Darren Till vs. Driscus Du Plessis are amongst the other fights booked for the final PPV event of the year.
