The PFL Thread

[Egg Shen]

Its abit of a shame Ditcheva is over in the PFL really, she'll be raking it in cash wise but she could be a bit of a breakout UK star with if she was with the UFC.

Show was good, I watched it in bits and pieces and it benefited from a ton of finishes.

[Carbomb]

She's young, she'll get there eventually - and when she does, if she's kept her zero, or at least not lost more than a couple, and if she's been sensible with her PFL cash, she should be able to negotiate a pretty good deal, I reckon.

[Egg Shen]

Yeah, she could very well end up being in a Kai Asakura type position. She needs to do 1 more year in the PFL, if she nails that she's sitting pretty.

[wandshogun09]

This is cool. Ray Longo in the same ring as Dakota Ditcheva’s mum back in 1993. I knew her mum was a fighter but crossing paths with a young Ray Longo? Small world! 

 

[Egg Shen]

The PFL European Championships are today, gets a bit of Lewis Mcgrillen and The Lazy King down you.

 

[Dai]

Not sure if it's been confirmed but there's been a few things in my news feed about PFL halving the million dollar prize, and scaling back the whole pre tournament bit as well. From what I've read it sounds like it's gojng to be more like the old Bellator tourneys. 

Seems like the Saudi's are not as enthusiastic as they once we're. Maybe the big Francis fight bombing changed their perspective. All of the news articles said the same thing, about this being the start of the end, and how the name value of the tournies will drastically weaken. Will it though? I took a quick look at a few previous entrant pools, and it's not like they were huge star-studded fields even with a million dollar prize. Can't see it affecting the talent level that badly

[Carbomb]

It may affect their ability to attract UFC-level talent, a bit. I don't think Ngannou would've stayed in MMA if he hadn't had PFL to go to.

[wandshogun09]

Yeah I think Francis is gonna box again. Haven’t seen him show any interest in anything PFL related recently. And then you see guys like Patchy Mix and Pitbull being vocal about basically being put on ice since PFL took over Bellator, I heard Aaron Pico’s been on about wanting to fight in the UFC etc. None of it’s looking good. It’s got all the signs of being a slowly sinking ship. 

[BigJag]

Wasn't Francis supposed to be heavily involved in promoting and expanding the PFLs reach in Africa? Including developing avenues for African fighters.

[wandshogun09]

Yeah, there’s that. I’m just on about him as an active fighter. He’s meant to be their PFL Africa Chairman or something but I’m not even sure what’s happening with that. 

[Dai]

Francis was the exception though. Apart from him, I'm trying to think of any half decent UFC fighter in the last few years who has left voluntarily to do the million dollar tourney. I can't think of any I don't think. I don't follow it closely but I always pictured it being the guys who have been released from the UFC. 

Edited January 10, 2025 by Dai

[Egg Shen]

18 hours ago, Dai said:

All of the news articles said the same thing, about this being the start of the end, and how the name value of the tournies will drastically weaken. Will it though? I took a quick look at a few previous entrant pools, and it's not like they were huge star-studded fields even with a million dollar prize. Can't see it affecting the talent level that badly

Think the plan is to keep it more of a Contenders style series, then they have all the "named" fighters compete on those Championship Series cards.

Signs aren't good though, Don Davies has posted some weird shit on X about investors pulling out, then there's the stuff Bellator fighters being held hostage under contract.

Make or break year I reckon.

[Egg Shen]

Yep, there's been some changes, and they sound for the better if you ask me:

 

[Egg Shen]

the full lineup for next week's (now) PFL card:

 

I mean, that undercard is purely for the locals, the mean card is decent but the main event is a pearler.

[wandshogun09]

Usman Nurmagomedov vs Paul Hughes was tremendous. I was saying before that 2024 was short on obvious FOTY contenders, well we’re only a few weeks into 2025 and this and Merab vs Umar are already probably gonna be on my FOTY shortlist by the end of the year. What a fight. I’m gonna have to rewatch this one in the week. One, just because it was so good. Two, I wanna score it properly. I lost track in real time but it was close, and the point deduction against Usman in the third muddied it even more. I felt like Hughes had done enough by the end though. But I don’t know if that was me just getting swept up in the moment and being swayed by Hughes doing better than I expected going in. I loved the way he was attacking the body and you could see Usman was feeling it in the later rounds. Maybe I’m wrong but I felt like Usman was fortunate to get the decision here. Especially with the point deduction. I felt like it was a Hughes win or possibly even a draw with the point taken off. Even that 5th round was close though. I’ll have to watch it again. Great fight.

This was nice to see…

I know when the fight was first being talked about there was a lot of noise about McGregor being in the Hughes corner, I’m glad he wasn’t though. Obviously he was busy making a tit of himself over at BKFC. But this was such a great fight and it was nice to see both sides being respectful after. I suspect it wouldn’t have been that way had McGregor been there. He just brings bad energy wherever he goes.  

They’ve got to do the rematch. Not sure they do it in Belfast like Hughes is pushing for but they’ve gotta run it back, if not next then soon. Usman’s already trying to shoot that talk down though. He’s saying Hughes “has work to do” and should have to win 3 or 4 fights before getting another crack at it. Bollocks. I think he knows how close and tough this was and that he barely scraped through it and he’s not keen on doing it again anytime soon. I wanna see it though.