Kelvin Gastelum won’t be competing at next week’s UFC 273 event, after all.
Despite scrambling to line up a new opponent when his originally intended foe, Nassourdine Imavov, was unable to obtain a visa in time to participate in the card, Gastelum (17-8 MMA, 11-8 UFC) has now been forced out of the rescheduled matchup with Dricus Du Plessis (16-2 MMA, 2-0 UFC) due to injury.
UFC officials today announced the change.
Due to injury, Kelvin Gastelum has been removed from his middleweight bout with Dricus du Plessis. As a result, this bout has been cancelled from the event.
With the changes to the card, the lineup for UFC 273, which takes place April 9 at VyStar Veterans Memorial Arena in Jacksonville, Fla., now includes:
MAIN CARD (Pay-per-view, 10 p.m. ET)
- Champ Alexander Volkanovski vs. Chan Sung Jung – for featherweight title
- Champ Aljamain Sterling vs. Interim champ Petr Yan – to unify bantamweight title
- Gilbert Burns vs. Khamzat Chimaev
- Mackenzie Dern vs. Tecia Torres
- Ilir Latifi vs. Aleksei Oleinik
PRELIMINARY CARD (ESPN, 8 p.m. ET)
- Aspen Ladd vs. Raquel Pennington
- Ian Garry vs. Darian Weeks
- Josh Fremd vs. Anthony Hernandez
- Jairzinho Rozenstruik vs. Marcin Tybura
PRELIMINARY CARD (ESPN+, 6 p.m. ET)
- Mickey Gall vs. Mike Malott
- Julio Arce vs. Daniel Santos
- Mark Madsen vs. Vinc Pichel
- Kay Hansen vs. Piera Rodriguez
