Jared Cannonier's power may cause Kelvin Gastelum to revert to old tactics
Prior to Kelvin Gastelum’s fight against Robert Whittaker, I wrote about the TUF winner’s struggles dealing with height and reach. There is a distinct difference in his distance striking differential when his opponent has a height-reach average above 72 inches. This factor will likely be at play again this Saturday against Jared Cannonier.
Cannonier stands at 71 inches tall and has a 77-inch reach. In Gastelum’s previous six fights against fighters with a 74 height-reach average his distance differential was -0.30 (significant strikes landed at distance per minute minus significant strikes absorbed in the position per minute). That measure would rank 148th out of the fighters currently ranked by the UFC.
Overall Gastelum only has a +0.28 differential, which is worse than 118 ranked fighters. Cannonier’s measure is nothing spectacular at +0.61, but it is still more than twice Gastelum’s differential.
If Gastelum is not likely to have the edge in terms of volume, he could be in a lot of trouble against Cannonier. The former heavyweight is not really known for padding the strike count. Since moving down to middleweight, he has made his money with power. At 185 pounds, he is averaging 1.46 knockdowns per 15 minutes of fight time. While competing in the UFC at heavyweight and light heavyweight, he managed to average only 0.23 knockdowns per 15 minutes.
Gastelum has allowed his opponents to average 0.31 knockdowns per 15 minutes. While that may not sound like a lot, ranked fighters really don’t get dropped that often. The average for a ranked UFC fighter is only 0.19. On the other hand, Gastelum has only been knocked down five times in his UFC career, and four of those came in a single fight against middleweight champion Israel Adesanya.
Cannonier has had some issues dealing with wrestling throughout his UFC career. He allows 2.64 takedowns per 15 minutes. There are currently only eight ranked UFC fighters who allow more takedowns. Gastelum landed nine takedowns in his first eight fights. Since then he has only landed more than one takedown in one fight. That happens to be the only fight he has won since 2018. That lone victory came over Ian Heinisch where Gastelum landed six takedowns and held control time for 6:50 of the 15-minute fight.
Gastelum’s best path to victory is probably going back to his wrestling roots. However, that seems unlikely due to his recent tactics. On top of that, it is a much more difficult task to dominate via position in a 25-minute fight. Cannonier will have just enough time to land his power shots and should be the rightful favorite.