https://youtu.be/HKY9GiJgUHw
This weekend, former UFC light heavyweight champion Vitor Belfort will return to the Octagon. He will do so in his native Brazil, where he will be taking on former welterweight contender Kelvin Gastelum in the middleweight main event of UFC Fight Night 106.
Ahead of Vitor Belfort’s compelling style clash with the dangerous Gastelum, the UFC has released video of his thunderous 2013 knockout of former Strikeforce middleweight champ Luke Rockhold, who would go on to capture UFC gold several years later. Belfort earned this win with a beautiful wheel kick, just 2:32 into the first round of the fight.
Watch the fight in full at the top of this article.
After this knockout of Rockhold, Belfort would score another head-kick KO over Dan Henderson. This knockout would then earn him a crack at Chris Weidman, who held the middleweight title at the time. Regrettably for Belfort and his fans, Weidman defended the title with a first-round TKO.
From there, Belfort rebounded with yet another knockout of Henderson. Unfortunately, he was then TKO’d in his next two fights, succumbing to punches dealt by top contenders Ronaldo “Jacare” Souza and Gegard Mousasi. This catches us up to the present. He enters his bout with Gastelum with an overall record of 25-13-0.
Gastelum, meanwhile, recently returned to the middleweight division with a savage, third-round TKO of the recently retired Tim Kennedy. This move to the middleweight division, of course, was not his choice. Instead, he was forced to move up a weight class after several failed attempts to cut down to the welterweight division’s 170-pound cap – the latest of which saw him fail to even step onto the scale for a scheduled bout with Donald “Cowboy” Cerrone. Gastelum is 13-2 in sum.
Who do you think comes out on top in this Vitor Belfort vs. Kelvin Gastelum middleweight bout? Sound off, PENN Nation!
This article first appeared on BJPenn.com on 3/7/2017.