With the news that the UFC had cut five fighters from its roster this week, it seemed highly likely that we hadn’t seen the end of the promotion’s spring housecleaning. True to expectations, it looks like another four fighters will be finding their next MMA bouts outside the Octagon.
That news comes from the removal of a fresh batch of athletes from the UFC.com online rosters, as tracked by the UFC Roster Watch Twitter bot. Most notable among the apparent releases is former welterweight-turned-featherweight Tristan Connelly. The Canadian fighter made an electric UFC debut back in 2019, defeating current rising contender Michel Pereira by decision. Unfortunately for Connelly, his career has since been hampered by injuries. A 2021 move to featherweight resulted in back-to-back losses, to Pat Sabatini and Darren Elkins.
Joining Connelly is fellow Canadian featherweight TJ Laramie. A standout regionally, Laramie punched his ticket to the UFC during the 2020 Contender Series season. Laramie went 0-2 with the world’s largest MMA promotion, however, with a first round sub loss to Darrick Minner and his own decision loss to Sabatini this last April.
TSN’s Aaron Bronsteter confirmed Connelly & Laramie had been released from the promotion.
Felipe Colares and Niklas Stolze round out the reported cuts. Colares suffered the first stoppage loss of his career in May, in a 3rd round TKO defeat to Chase Hooper—also losing back-to-back fights for the first time in the process. Stolze went 0-3 during his brief UFC career, dropping fights to Ramazan Emeev, Jared Gooden, and Benoit Saint-Denis. His losses to Gooden and Saint-Denis marked the first stoppage defeats of his career as well.
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