Kennedy: Gastelum and Alves are lazy, disrespectful @$$#0*E$

Thiago Alves disgracefully missed weight by 6.6 pounds for UFC 205. The fight with Jim Miller will go on, but Miller had to put on weight, so he was within five pounds of Alves at the official weigh-in. Alves cannot weigh more than 173 by fight time for the 163 catchweight contest. Alves also forfeits 20% of his purse.

That cluster was eclipsed by the utter failure of Kelvin Gastelum, who was so far off the contracted weight he never bothered to weigh in at all. The fight with Donald Cerrone was canceled. This is stealing. Gastelum stole from Cerrone the chance to win his show money. Gastelum stole from the fans one of the most anticipated fights on the greatest card in league history. And Gastelum stole from his employers, who spent a fortune promoting the event.

Kelvin Gastelum is a loser and a thief.

UFC middleweight Tim Kennedy, whose fight with Rashad Evans was canceled for an entirely different reason, spoke with Submission Radio about the missed cuts.

It’s so disrespectful. I mean, it’s so unprofessional,” said Kennedy. “I can’t even process what’s going through somebody’s head to make a choice – and they’re choices – about not making weight. Leading up to the fight, it’s what you’re eating, it’s how hard you’re training, your caloric intake, how much you’re burning. These are all literal choices that an athlete makes.

“That is a lazy disrespectful a**hole that’s doing that. It’s disrespectful to your opponent, it’s disrespectful to the fan. That’s Kelvin Gastelum and Thiago saying, ‘I don’t care about the fans’. That’s what they’re doing. They don’t care about the sport, they don’t care about their integrity – because that’s what it is.

“I signed a contract that on this day, this Friday, I will step on the scale and weigh ‘this’. That’s what it says in the contract – and in return you’ll pay me. That’s the point in being a prize fighter. So now they’re breaking their word, they’re breaking their contract and they’re disrespecting their opponent – but worst of all, they’re saying ‘f*** you to the fans’. That’s unbelievable.

“So in 16 years as a professional athlete, with making weight over 200 times, I’ve never missed weight. Because I’m not going to do that to the fans, I’m not going to do that to my opponent, but most importantly, I understand what integrity means and I signed a contract and I gave my word that this is what’s gonna happen.

I feel horrible for my teammate, Cowboy. I mean, we sweat, we bled, we busted our asses together out at the ranch. You can’t imagine what we poured into these fights to be here at Madison Square Garden, to be here in New York, to be part of UFC 205, and then it disintegrated for me in a different way that it did for Cowboy – both of which are just… it’s painful. So my heart goes out to Cowboy right now. On the Thiago and Kelvin thing, I mean, come on, guys. Bad form.

This whole week I’ve tweeted every single middleweight I knew that I thought would be here in New York, ‘hey do you want to do a catch weight? Do you wanna bring your mom in and we’ll fight with bats?,’ whatever, just let me fight at 205. So now there’s another opportunity. I haven’t changed. I still wanna fight at 205. I’ll fight Brock Lesnar if they brought him here. I don’t care.

Kelvin, he’s a tough guy, he’s a talented guy, and right now he’s disrespecting his opponent – Cowboy, my friend and he’s disrespecting the fans. So I’m still gonna do what I’m gonna do, which is fight. I’m a fighter. I’m a prizefighter, that’s what I came here to do. So if they ask me, absolutely I’d fight him.

I’m ready to fight at UFC 205. If I’m gonna fight Jacare, if I’m gonna fight Yoel, if I’m gonna fight Chris, if I’m gonna fight Gastelum. I came to New York to fight.

I fight the same. You put Bin Laden in there, Saddam Hussein in their prime, I’m gonna tear their arms off and beat them to death with them. If I’m gonna fight Kelvin Gastelum, he disrespected my friend and the fans, it doesn’t change anything, I’m gonna tear his arms off and beat him with them. Anybody that fights me is gonna have a rough night. This has been a great fight camp, it doesn’t matter who it is. Who’s the heavyweight champ right now? [Stipe Miocic], great fight. Cool, I’m down for that. Who’s light heavyweight champ? Daniel Cormier? I’m down. Is he in New York? Is he available? Michael Bisping, the middleweight champ. I don’t care. I swear, I would tie my arm behind my back and fight Bob Sapp. So I don’t care, I just want to fight and you’re gonna see a performance out of me.

UFC 205 takes place at Madison Square Garden on Saturday, November 12th.

Main Card (PPV)
Lwt champion Eddie Alvarez vs. fw champion Conor McGregor for lightweight title
Champion Tyron Woodley vs. Stephen Thompson for welterweight title
Champion Joanna Jedrzejczyk vs. Karolina Kowalkiewicz for the women’s strawweight title
Yoel Romero vs. Chris Weidman
Raquel Pennington vs. Miesha Tate

Prelim Card (FOX Sports 1)
Frankie Edgar vs. Jeremy Stephens
Michael Johnson vs. Khabib Nurmagomedov
Tim Boetsch vs. Rafael Natal
Vicente Luque vs. Belal Muhammad

Prelim Card (UFC Fight Pass)
Thiago Alves vs. Jim Miller
Liz Carmouche vs. Katlyn Chookagian