Robert Whittaker's road to regaining the middleweight title has taken another twist, with his next opponent pulling out at the eleventh hour.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The 30-year-old was expected to face Paulo Costa next month, but the Brazilian has been ruled out as he battles a severe case of the flu.<\/p>\n
It was a bout that would have resulted in the winner being granted a shot at current champion Israel Adesanya – who has previously defeated them both, but suffered the first loss of his career two weeks ago as he moved up a weight class<\/a>.<\/p>\n He will return to middleweight in the near future, and it was the Kiwi-Nigerian fighter who famously stunned Whittaker to take the belt from him in 2019<\/a>.<\/p>\n It was Whittaker's first loss in nine middleweight fights in the UFC, but he bounced back with unanimous decision wins over Darren Till and Jared Cannonier to re-insert himself into the title picture.<\/p>\n Costa himself came up short against Adesanya in their title fight at UFC 253 last September, which was the first loss of the Brazilian's professional career.<\/p>\n Instead, Whittaker will test himself against American Gastelum, who he was first due to face in a title defence in Melbourne in early 2019. The championship fight was called off on the morning of the event, with Whittaker undergoing emergency surgery for a collapsed bowel and internal hernia<\/a>.<\/p>\n ESPN's MMA reporter Brett Okamoto, who broke the news of the new fight, called Gastelum v Whittaker 'the one that got away'.<\/p>\n https:\/\/twitter.com\/bokamotoESPN\/status\/1371948474267103232<\/a><\/p>\n As a result, it was Adesanya who headlined the card, defeating legendary Brazilian Anderson Silva and then Gastelum a few months later, to thrust himself into the title picture.<\/p>\n Now the would-be foes will finally get the chance to square off, with Gastelum saying just a couple of weeks ago that he was "staying ready" in case one of either Whittaker or Costa pulled out of the contest.<\/p>\n "If one of those guys falls out for whatever reason, I'll be ready," Gastelum told reporters in February after his win over Ian Heinisch.<\/p>\n For a daily dose of the best of the breaking news and exclusive content from Wide World of Sports, subscribe to our newsletter by clicking here!<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Robert Whittaker's road to regaining the middleweight title has taken another twist, with his next opponent pulling out at the eleventh hour. The 30-year-old was […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45798"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=45798"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45798\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45800,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45798\/revisions\/45800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}