It’s that time again. Time for another round of UFC roster trimming. While it doesn’t happen with near the same regularity that it once did, the UFC roster still tends to go through a lot of churn, as new fighters are picked up month after month and fighters who haven’t made their mark in the promotion are released from their contracts.
Nothing is official, but it looks like 12 fighters are on their way out of the WME-IMG promotion. Their names (along with the names of several other fighters whose release or retirement has been reported) were removed from the UFC’s online roster of active fighters on May 26th. The updates were originally reported by UFCFIGHTERSiNFO, a twitter account that scrapes the UFC website for changes.
Here’s the list of fighters removed:
Daniel Jolly
Garreth McLellan
Roan Carneiro
Rich Walsh
Viscardi Andrade
Alessandro Ricci
Sam Sicilia
Mike De La Torre
Ning Guangyou
Alex Enlund
Michinori Tanaka
Reginaldo Vieira
There are no major surprises in that group. Viscardi Andrade, at 3-1, is the only fighter to have a winning record in the UFC at the time of his release. However, Andrade is currently under suspension for failing a USADA drug test. Sicilia, De La Torre, and Tanaka are the longest tenured UFC fighters to get the axe. Sicilia going 5-7 in his 5 years with the promotion, with Tanaka going 2-3 and De La Torre going 2-4 (1 NC) over 3 years.
Alex Enlund is a bit of a surprise. The British featherweight was signed to make his debut against Martin Buschkamp at UFC Hamburg in 2016, before being removed from the bout due to injury. His removal from the roster altogether is a bit of a surprise, considering he wasn’t signed as a last minute replacement fighter. If he continues his competitive MMA career following injury rehab, it seems like he’d be a strong candidate for another shot in the promotion.
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