The World Series of Fighting let go of their former welterweight champion last night, announcing that Steve Carl has been released from the promotion and is now a free agent. Carl had been ‘at odds’ with the promotion as of late, tweeting out numerous messages over the course of the last few weeks saying that WSOF wasn’t giving him a fight and wasn’t paying him enough to earn a living. He raised tweeting about his level of discomfort with the organization to another notch over the last few days, and when the media began to take notice to it, the promotion decided it was best to release him. Carl, 29, is 21-4 in his MMA career. He hasn’t fought since March, when he lost the WSOF welterweight championship to Rousimar Palhares. Prior to that bout, Carl had won seven in a row, including a signature submission victory over Josh Burkman in October 2013 that won him the vacant WSOF welterweight title. He was quickly moving up the world welterweight rankings, and although he suffered the setback to Palhares, he was still considered by most to be one of the top three or four welterweights in the WSOF, which is saying something considering it’s arguably the promotion’s strongest division. Now a free agent, Carl will have a choice of where to go next. It’s possible that, like former WSOF featherweight champion Georgi Karakhanyan, he could go back to Bellator, where he competed from 2010 to 2011, but it’s also possible that he could sign with Titan FC and immediately become one of the promotion’s top contenders at 170lbs. It’s also possible that the UFC could come calling and ink Carl to a contract in their welterweight division, which makes sense considering they just signed Burkman, who Carl beat, but Burkman has a different relationship with UFC president Dana White than Carl does. Although I personally would like to see Carl in the UFC, I really think Titan FC will be the frontrunner for his services, although we’ll see what the future holds soon enough, as I expect Carl to sign with a new promotion within the next week or two. I believe Carl has long been one of the most underrated welterweights in the sport, and his release from WSOF and likely-subsequent signing with a promotion more likely to give him airtime should do his career well, and I’m looking forward to seeing what’s next for him.
