Lost amidst the Strikeforce/Showtime extension and busy weekend in combat sports was the news the UFC has cut bantamweight Cole Escovedo, confirmed by the fighter via Twitter.



He made his UFC debut in May, losing a unanimous decision to Renan Barao at UFC 130. He followed that up with a second round TKO loss to Takeya Mizugaki at September's UFC 135 and a unanimous decision defeat to Alex Caceres at November's UFC on Fox 1.



The 30-year-old is the answer to a minor MMA trivia question as he was the WEC's first featherweight champion, winning the belt back in October 2002 with a first round submission win over Philip Perez. He defended the title successfully once before losing the belt to some guy named Urijah Faber nearly four years later, the first WEC title reign for the "California Kid".

While recent years haven't been kind to the 17-6 Escovedo (he's lost five of his last six), he's fought several notable fighters like Faber, Jens Pulver, Bart Palaszewski and Michael McDonald twice. He gave McDonald his only career loss back in May 2009.