Michael Bisping opens as underdog to Kelvin Gastelum in UFC-Shanghai headliner

Will the three-week turnaround to be too much for former UFC middleweight champion Michael Bisping?

The opening odds seem to suggest so.

This past weekend, UFC officials announced Bisping (30-8 MMA, 20-8 UFC), who lost his title to Georges St-Pierre (26-2 MMA, 20-2 UFC) on Nov. 4, will fight again on Nov. 26, when he meets Kelvin Gastelum (13-3 MMA, 8-3 UFC) in UFC Fight Night 122’s headliner.

Bisping, who’s No. 3 in the USA TODAY Sports/MMAjunkie MMA middleweight rankings, replaced Anderson Silva (34-8 MMA, 17-4 UFC), who was flagged due to a potential U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) violation. He takes on Gastelum, who’s an honorable mention in the rankings, in a five-round headliner.

The fight, which streams on UFC Fight Pass from Mercedes-Benz Arena in Shanghai, will mean Bisping is fighting on two different continents in two UFC main events in just a 21-day span. And though he ultimately got put to sleep with St-Pierre’s rear-naked choke, he did take a fair amount of punishment before the fight-ending submission.

That could be part of the reason Bisping has opened as a +120 underdog to -161 favorite Gastelum, according to William Hill, which posted the first line for the fight (via bestfightodds.com).

A winning $100 bet on Bisping would result in a profit of $120; a winning bet on Gastelum would net a profit of $62.11. That gives a implied winning probability of 45.5 percent for Bisping and 61.7 percent for Gastelum.

Being an underdog, though, is nothing too new for Bisping. His fight with St-Pierre closed as a pick’em with even odds, but when he won the title with an upset of Luke Rockhold, he closed as nearly a 5-1 underdog. A bout prior, he upset Silva as a +210 underdog.

Who wins his next bout? Cast your vote in the poll below.

And for more on UFC Fight Night 122, check out the UFC Rumors section of the site.

The Blue Corner is MMAjunkie‘s official blog and is edited by Mike Bohn.