Kelvin Gastelum is the youngest person to ever win The Ultimate Fighter, and in a featured preliminary bout at UFC 171 he proved he belongs in there with the best welterweights in MMA.
The TUF 17 winner earned the biggest win of his career, defeating Rick Story by decision in a back-and-forth welterweight battle at the American Airlines Center in Dallas.
Gastelum picked Story apart and cut him open in the first round, utilizing good head movement and a stiff jab. Both men are southpaws, but Story fought orthodox in the opening round, which is a tactic he changed after the first stanza.
Late in the second round, Story caught Gastelum with a left hand that wobbled the 22-year-old. He followed it up with a flurry and a straight left hand that dropped Gastelum. The third round saw the two men trade hard shots and reverse positions on the ground several times.
Ultimately, the judges handed Gastelum a split decision win. One judge mysteriously scored all three rounds for Gastelum, who improved to 8-0 as a pro; Story is now 16-8 and has alternated wins and losses dating back to 2011.
Tristar’s Garcia win in crazy battle with Spencer
In women’s bantamweight action, Jessica Andrade and Raquel Pennington went toe-to-toe for three rounds with Andrade coming out on the right side of a split decision. Andrade landed 90 strikes compared to 87 for Pennington, however Pennington outlanded Andrade 82-66 in significant strikes.
Featherweight Dennis Bermudez picked up his sixth straight win with a dominant TKO victory over Jimy Hettes. The TUF 16 finalist peppered Hettes with 64 strikes and six takedowns in less than eight minutes of action.
Bermudez (13-3) now sits alongside champion Jose Aldo’s record as the only 145-pounders in UFC history to win six straight. It was the first time Hettes had been finished in his career and just his second ever loss.
Rising flyweight prospect Justin Scoggins improved to 9-0 as a pro with a unanimous decision win over Will Campuzano. Scoggins, the third youngest fighter currently on the UFC roster, outclassed the veteran Campuzano on the feet and on the ground.
Sean Strickland was victorious in his UFC debut after submitting Robert “Bubba” McDaniel in the first round of their middleweight bout. Strickland, 23, is now 14-0 as a pro, while Watson fell to 21-8 and has lost two straight in the UFC.
In the opening bout of the night, Robert Whiteford became the first Scottish fighter to pick up a win in the UFC as he defeated Daniel Pineda by unanimous decision.
Whiteford was able to take Pineda down often and in the second round cut Pineda open with a left head kick. The Glasgow native escaped several kneebar attempts throughout the bout and control the action on the ground.
Also on the prelims, 28-year-old promotional newcomer Francisco Trevino earned a unanimous decision win over Brazilian Renee Forte in a catchweight bout. The fight was originally scheduled to be a lightweight contest, however Forte missed weight and was fined 20 percent of his purse.