Ultimately, Robelis
Despaigne didn’t deliver upon his considerable hype.
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The Cuban heavyweight was one of seven fighters that recently
parted ways with the
UFC. The others were as follows: Matheus
Nicolau, Jessica
Penne, Tamires
Vidal, Vinicius
Salvador, Charalampos
Grigoriou and Jesse
Butler.
MMAFighting.com confirmed the cuts after an
initial report from Twitter account UFC Roster
Watch. It is unclear if the aforementioned fighters were
released or if the promotion simply elected not to renew their
contracts.
Despaigne entered the UFC to much acclaim thanks to five
first-round finishes on the regional circuit. That fanfare only
increased when “The Bad Boy” stopped Josh
Parisian in just 18 seconds in his Octagon debut at UFC 299.
However, back-to-back losses against Waldo
Cortes-Acosta and Austen Lane
left plenty to be desired — particularly when it came to his lack
of defensive wrestling ability.
Nicolau, meanwhile, exits the promotion on the heels of successive
losses to Asu
Almabaev, Alex Perez
and Brandon
Royval. Prior to that, the 31-year-old Brazilian had been
victorious in seven of eight Octagon appearances across two
separate UFC stints.
Out of the rest of the group, Penne was arguably the most
accomplished UFC athlete. A former
Invicta Fighting Championships atomweight title holder, the
41-year-old appeared on the “The Ultimate Fighter 20” before
challenging for strawweight gold at UFC Fight Night 69, where she
suffered a third-round TKO loss to Joanna
Jedrzejczyk on June 20, 2015.