Tai Tuivasa was winning on the market with a round to go, then lost his eighth in a row

Build a ticket

Every leg below was a real Kalshi market on this fight, at the price it traded for before the bout opened. Tick any combination to see what it would have returned. This is hindsight, not a pick.

Prices are the last trade before this bout opened, taken from Kalshi one-minute candles. Combining legs multiplies their prices, which assumes they are independent. They are not: a round-one finish and a knockout overlap heavily, so a real book would price that ticket higher than the arithmetic here. Returns are gross of the Kalshi fee, and the larger stakes assume that size was there to buy, which on a thin prop market it often was not.

How it happened

Three rounds of heavyweight, and the judges split it. Two cards read 29-28 for Robelis Despaigne, one read 28-29 for Tai Tuivasa, and it was scored at 5:00 of round three. Yahoo's card roundup put the word slopfest in its headline. No source contested the scoring. The complaint was about the quality of the fight, not about the judges.

Despaigne is Cuban, an Olympic taekwondo bronze medallist from London 2012 at plus 80 kilos. The UFC released him in 2024. He went 7-0 in Karate Combat, won its heavyweight title, and was re-signed in July 2026. His MMA record is now 7-2, and 2-2 in the UFC. This was the first decision win of his career. Every previous win had come by first-round KO or TKO.

Tuivasa drops to 14-11. Eight straight losses ties Tony Ferguson's UFC record. His last win came against Derrick Lewis at UFC 271 in February 2022, more than four years ago. Despaigne used his time in the cage to thank the promotion “for the second chance, to my team and my family who never left me alone”, and said the comeback meant “so much to me”.

The official numbers

Official tabulation: Despaigne landed 30 significant strikes to Tuivasa’s 31, landed 2 of 2 takedowns and gave up 6:58 of control time.

Landed of attempted. Significant strikes exclude short strikes from inside the guard; total strikes include them, which is why a fighter working on the ground can show a much larger total. Control time is time spent in a dominant position. Source: UFCStats official tabulation, read Sep 21, 2026.

Tale of the tape

These are career rates from the fighters' official pages, read the day after the event. Most had not been updated with this fight yet, so they describe each man going in, not including this result. Takedown accuracy is left out everywhere: the published figure contradicts the published takedown average on several fighters, so we would rather show nothing than show a number we cannot reconcile.

Recent form

Most recent first, this fight included.

What the market did

Read this before the table. The lowest trade on this market printed at 12¢, and you will see that number quoted elsewhere. It was not a price you could buy at. It was a seller hitting the bid. The best offer at that moment was 18¢, 6¢ higher, and that is the number this page uses.

Despaigne opened at 78c (-550) as a heavy favourite, with Tuivasa at +410. During the fight the cheapest a buyer could have paid was 18c at 00:24Z on September 20, a 60 cent move against the favourite. For that stretch the market had Tuivasa winning. The split decision went the other way and Despaigne settled at 100c, the same as every winner on the card.

Other sites will quote 12c. That was a seller hitting the bid, six cents below the best offer, so nobody could have bought there. At 18c the point stands. Despaigne had never won past the first round in his career. When the early finish did not arrive, traders sold him. The judges were counting rounds the whole time. Price tracks momentum. Cards count rounds.

What each stake returned

The bout, on the record

Quick answers

Sources and method

Results and scorecards from the official UFC event pages, cross-checked against Sherdog and theScore. Closing moneylines from BestFightOdds and DraftKings, captured after the event. Official striking and grappling numbers from the UFCStats tabulation for this event, read in a browser on Sep 21, 2026 because UFCStats blocks automated fetching. Fighter career rates from the official athlete pages, read the day after the card. Contract prices are Kalshi one-minute candlesticks on the KXUFCFIGHT-26SEP19TUIDES-DES market, with prop legs from the KXUFCMOV, KXUFCMOF, KXUFCROUNDS, KXUFCDISTANCE and KXUFCVICROUND series. Where sources disagree on a finish time or a method, both readings are carried on this page rather than resolved silently. We aren't affiliated with the UFC or Kalshi.