Two more fighters have been removed from the UFC roster as Austen Lane and Jesus Aguilar are no longer on the roster.
Roster Watch reported on Tuesday that both Lane and Aguilar have been removed from the UFC roster. Sources confirmed to Heavy.com that Lane was removed from the roster after he told the UFC he is retiring from MMA.
Austen Lane Retires
The 38-year-old Lane retires from MMA following a 13-8, 1 NC record in the sport, including a 1-5, 1 NC record inside the Octagon.
Lane was a former professional football player for the NFL’s Jacksonville Jaguars and Detroit Lions. He was drafted in the fifth round in 2010 and went on to play three seasons for the Jaguars and one season for the Lions. In 30 NFL games, including 17 starts, Lane had 66 tackles and 3 sacks while playing defensive end. His NFL career ended in 2015 after he announced his retirement from the sport.
Immediately after retiring from the NFL, Lane went into amateur MMA, and he went 5-1 with five knockout wins while fighting for the Combat Night promotion, a Florida-based regional development league.
In 2017, Lane made his pro MMA debut. He won his first four MMA fights by knockout before getting an opportunity on Dana White’s Contender Series in 2018, but he was knocked out by fellow former NFL player Greg Hardy.
After going 7-2 in his next nine fights on the regional scene, including winning the Fury FC heavyweight title, Lane got another chance on DWCS in 2022, and he made good with a knockout win to earn a UFC contract. He then fought in the UFC from 2022 to 2026, competing at both heavyweight and light heavyweight, but winning only one of his seven fights inside the Octagon.
After being finished by Iwo Baraniewski at UFC London in March, Lane decided to walk away from the sport. We at Heavy wish him well in his future endeavors.
Jesus Aguilar Removed From Roster
Aguilar, meanwhile, is a 30-year-old Mexican fighter who won a UFC contract following a win on DWCS in 2022. He then fought seven times in the UFC, going 4-3 overall, including a brutal 17-second KO win over Shannon Ross at UFC 290.
This weekend at UFC Macau, Aguilar was set to fight Rei Tsuruya, but he withdrew from the fight for unknown reasons and was replaced by Luis Gurle, in a fight first broken here at Heavy.com by Marcel Dorff.
For whatever reason, the UFC decided to remove Aguilar from the roster after his recent withdrawal, so he joins the long list of UFC fighters who have recently been released by the promotion.
With the UFC holding 50 more fights this summer on DWCS, the promotion needs to make more room for incoming fighters. When fighters like Lane retire, it makes the UFC’s job easier to just remove them from the roster with no issues. But the promotion is surely going to have to make some tough decisions in the coming months to pare down the roster, such as when they removed top-10 ranked women’s bantamweight Ketlen Vieira despite her winning her last fight.
UFC Removes 2 More Fighters From Roster