Kelvin Gastelum's coach reveals staph infections impacted UFC Saudi Arabia weight cut, acknowledges 'big f*ckup'

Kelvin Gastelum’s coach detailed what went wrong with the weight cut for UFC on ABC 6.

Gastelum (19-9 MMA, 13-9 UFC) was scheduled to face Daniel Rodriguez in a welterweight bout this past Saturday in Riyadh, but their bout was shifted to middleweight after Gastelum struggled with his cut down. Gastelum won the bout by unanimous decision.

Considering Gastelum has missed weight several times before, UFC CEO Dana White was far from thrilled. However, Gastelum’s coach, Santino DeFranco, said the former interim title challenger was dealing with quite a bit of adversity in the weeks leading up to the fight.

“First of all, he didn’t accept the fight with D-Rod. He never did. He woke up to Instagram and it was on, and he was like, ‘Whoa, what’s going on here?’ Like that was that,” DeFranco said on his YouTube channel. When he woke up to the news, he had been in a motorcycle accident like a couple days beforehand in Thailand, got all cut up and scraped up, got home, was still all cut up and scraped up, but then he got a staph infection from all of the cuts and everything from the motorcycle accident. So, he had staph, and it got bad.

“It was like three weeks of antibiotics. Then he’s flying out to Saudi Arabia two weeks early to acclimate to the time because he’s fought on Fight Island and that time was really rough. He got set up with a meal prep plan and got stuff set up and got a gym. … Their concept of healthy food for a weight cut is like healthy food for regular people eating healthy, not this is how you cut weight. There was just stuff that wasn’t right, and he was trying to whittle his way through, then he got another staph infection.”

DeFranco acknowledges that it wasn’t professional on the part of Gastelum, who was very apologetic in his post-fight interview.

“I hate it. It’s unacceptable this happened,” DeFranco said. “The other thing people don’t realize is this might have actually saved D-Rod’s career. He had lost two in a row. If he had lost to Kelvin and there were no issues, there’s a good chance he gets cut.

“He got a new contract, they upped his pay, and he got 30 percent of Kelvin’s purse. He got paid, and he got a new contract. Look, I’m not saying any of it was right, but look, D-Rod still has a job, Kelvin still has a job. It was a really big f*ckup, and it’s not excusable. We are where we are, and that’s the situation.”