The PFL made a historic announcement this morning when they announced that in July, they will be heading to Cape Town, South Africa for a dual event. On July 26th, we will see the debut of The Champions Series and we will also see the first PFL Africa event which is led by chairman and super fight heavyweight champion Francis Ngannou.
Focusing on The Champions Series, the event will be headlined by a middleweight title fight between Johnny Eblen (16-0) and Costello Van Steenis (16-3). This will be for the middleweight world championship now that the Bellator middleweight title is no longer an active title with Eblen coming into the fight as world champion.
For Eblen, this will be his first fight since October when he successfully defended his middleweight title against Fabian Edwards. The win against Edwards was Eblen’s fourth championship victory. Now, he’ll defend the PFL middleweight title against Costello Van Steenis.
Van Steenis had been in Bellator since 2017. He knocked on the door of title contention a couple of times but fell short in potential title eliminators. Overall in Bellator, Van Steenis went 7-2 and then he made his debut for the PFL at the championship event last November scoring a first round head kick knockout.
PFL Champions Series
In the other title fight, arguably the biggest star the promotion has in Dakota Ditcheva (14-0) will be facing Hawaii’s Sumiko Inaba (8-1) for the flyweight world championship. While Ditcheva was the 2024 season champion, she will not be entering the cage like Eblen being labeled as the champion per the press release.
Starting with Inaba, she actually made her professional debut with Bellator back in 2020. After winning her first six fights, she suffered a setback against Denis Kielholtz back in 2023, but she’s since bounced back with two straight wins including a finish in her last bout.
She’ll be a massive underdog on July 26th. Dakota Ditcheva is absolute star for the PFL and promotion is making her very happy by getting her back in the cage. Ditcheva made her promotional debut back in 2022 with two first round stoppages and then in 2023, she won the championship in PFL Europe.
She took part in the regular season last year and ran through her competition. Ditcheva went a perfect 4-0 with four finishes including an extremely impressive finish against former UFC title challenger Taila Santos in the championship fight. With that performance, Ditcheva made it clear that she’s not just the best flyweight in the promotion, she has an argument as one of the best flyweights in any promotion.
Africa Debut
In addition to The Champions Series, PFL Africa will also be making it’s debut. There will be an inaugural Africa tournament which will run very similar to the World Tournament that’s currently ongoing. The tournament will feature eight-man brackets and things will kick off with the heavyweight and bantamweight divisions. The rest of the tournaments will be announced soon, but this morning, the first four fights were announced.
In the First Round of the Heavyweight bracket:
Jashell Ticha Awa (3-1) of Cameroon faces Justin Clarke (2-0) of South Africa
Abdoullah Kane (3-0) of Senegal meets Mohammad Ben Yahia (9-4) of Morocco
In the Bantamweight bracket:
Nkosi Ndebele (8-3) of South Africa takes on Mahmoud Atef (5-2) of Egypt
Simbarashe Hokonya (5-0) of Zimbabwe battles Abderrahman Errachidy (4-1) of Morocco