Now that the PFL World Tournaments are over, should they continue?

The PFL World Tournaments concluded last week with three more champions crowned and three $500,000 checks handed out to the winners. Overall, there were eight tournament champions that were crowned during their first year of world tournaments.

Welterweight: Thad Jean (11-0)

Featherweight: Movlid Khaybulaev (24-0-1)

Bantamweight: Marcirley Alves (15-4)

Women’s Flyweight: Liz Carmouche (25-8)

Lightweight: Alfie Davis (20-5-1)

Light Heavyweight: Antonio Carlos Jr. (19-6)

Heavyweight: Oleg Popov (22-2)

Middleweight: Fabian Edwards (16-4)

Should the PFL World Tournaments continue?

The premise of the tournaments this year is that they would crown champions and lead the winners to eventual matchups with the PFL world champions at a later date. The tournaments became a thing after the promotion decided to abandon the regular season format that they became known for.

While I think it was generally a step in the right direction, I think the promotion needs to take it a step forward. I think the PFL should just get rid of the tournament format ahead of 2026 and just focus on building up it’s signature brand.

Right now, the promotion has their “Champions Series” which is supposed to be the home of their best fighters. Only a select few fall into that category and as of right now, there’s only going to be a few events for all of 2025 that are considered champions series events.

With such few events on the books, most of the promotion’s world champions will only be fighting once this year. There is a massive problem with the PFL and the activity of their best fighters. There’s a simple fix to that and it’s the fix that fight fans want and that’s getting rid of all of these tournament / season formats.

The promotion has a very solid talent pool and they need to focus on just building the best possible cards moving forward. They need to get their champions and stars more active and they need to book the fights that the fans want to see.

Simple Formula

The PFL has consumed themselves with being different by having all these different formats. Fighting is a very simple game and they need to follow the simple formula here. Of course, they are never going to be the UFC. They will never be an equivalent to the UFC, it’s just never going to happen.

However, they can definitely have an incredibly solid promotion that is the clear number two in the world providing great fighters with great opportunities. However, if I’m a top free agent right now, what would be my incentive to go to the PFL?

I would look at their stars and think to myself, “Why would I want to sign with a promotion where I’m lucky to even fight twice in a calendar year.” The promotion has seemingly 2,000 executives and only a select few have the slightest idea of how the fight game really works.

It’s so frustrating to watch them continuously trip over their own feet when they have the pieces to put on a really good show. I’m not convinced that they will change anything going into next year, but I sure hope that they make their top talent more active. If they don’t, they are not going to be an attractive destination and viewership will continue to decline.