Outside Source
Management team First Round Management announced on Friday that their client, Robelis Despaigne (6-2), has been re-signed to the UFC. The soon-to-be 38-year-old ex-kickboxer has no return date announced, nor an opponent selected for his first appearance back.
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Despaigne ran the table in Karate Combat in one year
The Cuban appeared once in MMA following his UFC release, punching out Junior dos Santos in May at the inaugural MVP MMA event. This gave the 6-foot-7 striker his sixth first-round knockout across his six victories. On the way, Despaigne joined the striking-only Karate Combat league at the end of 2024 and punched out Dominik Jedrzejczyk in four seconds. Subsequent foes Marcos Brigagao and Roggers Souza could only survive a combined 20 seconds in the pit against him.
On the heels of those three speedy knockouts totaling a whopping 24 seconds of combat time, he entered into KC Last Man Standing tournament to earn a heavyweight title shot. In one night, “The Bad Boy” outpointed former Glory light heavyweight champ Saulo Cavalari, went on to wreck fellow UFC ex-pat Tim Johnson in 20 seconds and forced the doctor to save another former UFC fighter in Zac Pauga after beating him down for three minutes.
The six KC wins, five by knockout, culminated in a title shot in December. Facing one more fighter cast out of the UFC in Sam Alvey, Despaigne shattered the Cinderella story that was Alvey’s post-UFC run by blasting him with a head kick to claim the organization’s heavyweight crown. On this same run, Despaigne attached himself to the ill-fated GFL promotion, who lured him into signing with them by offering him a match against Todd Duffee in what was to be their first event in May 2025—GFL has still yet to run an event.
This article first appeared at Recent News on Sherdog.com
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