Gastelum misses weight, fight with Cowboy scrapped

Published on Friday, 11/11/16, at 11:46 a.m. Eastern.

Saturday’s UFC 205 card in the promotion’s New York City debut at Madison Square Garden has been billed as the best card in mixed martial arts history. If you had asked me on Monday if I agreed with that assertion, I would’ve nodded my approval.

Now? Not so much.

Granted, there are still a slew of fights to be excited about on the 11-fight card. However, two fights have been scrapped since Tuesday.

First, Rashad Evans couldn’t get licensed by the New York Athletic Commission, so his middleweight debut against Tim Kennedy was taken off the prelims portion of the card. They will now meet at UFC 206 in Toronto.

Then this morning came even worse news when welterweight Kelvin Gastelum missed weight yet again. Therefore, Gastelum’s scrap with Donald ‘Cowboy’ Cerrone has been cancelled.

This is the third time Gastelum has missed weight in his career, which obviously begs the question: Why book Gastelum on such an important card when there was clearly a chance this would happen?

The big losers are Cerrone and the fans, who adore Cowboy’s anytime-anywhere-and-at-any-weight approach to fighting.

Here’s my preview and picks for the prelims filed to VegasInsider.com yesterday.