Chris Curtis sure doesn’t want to go back to welterweight. But if that’s the only way he can get one particular shot at redemption, he just might do it.
Curtis fought at welterweight in the PFL and on Dana White’s Contender Series, but has been much happier in recent years at middleweight. And after a bonus-winning knockout of Joaquin Buckley this past December, the 35-year-old got a matchup with Kelvin Gastelum that could truly have propelled him in the division.
But at UFC 287 in Miami in April, Curtis lost a decision to Gastelum. It was a Fight of the Night winner, and the extra $50,000 no doubt was great. But Curtis maintains he won the fight.
In fact, he planned an appeal of the result with the contention that a clash of heads in the second round led to a knockdown that swayed the judges and cost him the round, and therefore the fight.
“I’ll always be mad about it,” Curtis recently told MMA Junkie Radio. “I’ll always say I refuse to call it a loss. It’s weird for me, because I, honest to God, I beat Kelvin Gastelum. Out of everybody in that building that night, Kelvin Gastelum’s the one guy I beat. I definitely didn’t beat the ref. I didn’t beat the judges on that one, but Kelvin – I beat Kelvin. He knows I beat Kelvin. But I lost everybody else in that building that night, unfortunately.”
Gastelum picked up a pair of 29-28 scores and a 30-27 from the three judges in Miami and was praised after the fight for his comeback from five losses in six fights. Of the MMA media sites tracked by MMA Decisions, around 80 percent scored the fight for Gastelum.
Curtis just thinks the brakes just a little bit and wishes he had the win to put on his resume.
“It just sucks because I know what happened. He knows what happened. And I just feel like it’d be a really good feather in my cap,” Curtis said. “Everybody’s like, ‘Oh, it was the best (Gastelum’s) looked – he’s back in his best form.’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, but I beat that guy. I was good and I beat that guy.’ They’re like, ‘That’s the Kelvin that fought (Israel Adesanya).’ And I’m like, ‘Cool – that’s great. He was that Kelvin, but I was better than him that night.’
“I’ll never get that feather in my cap, so that one kind of stings. I can’t change history. Luckily for me though, the UFC’s not treating it like a loss. They kind of rolled through it and they haven’t set me back. They gave me a really good fight going forward, and I’ll take it.”
Curtis (30-10 MMA, 4-2 UFC) has been booked at middleweight against Nassourdine Imavov at UFC 289 on June 10 in Vancouver, where he’ll try to get back in the win column.
But Gastelum announced on social media in the days after his win over Curtis that instead of staying at middleweight, he’ll return to welterweight, a division in which he struggled to make weight on multiple occasions in his first handful of fights after Season 17 of “The Ultimate Fighter.”
That means if Curtis wants to fight him again, he might have to do it at welterweight.
“Hopefully I’ll find Kelvin again,” he said. “Going to 170 means nothing to me. I can still make ’70 – it sucks, but I’ll still make it. You can’t change weight classes to escape this ass whooping. So I’ll find it eventually.”
For more on the card, visit MMA Junkie’s event hub for UFC 289.
