PFL founder Donn Davis took to social media yesterday and announced a major change to their rules for the upcoming season. Davis announced that beginning this year, elbows would be allowed in every matchup moving forward. Of course, elbows were not permitted during their regular season format in the past.
Despite being allowed in the unified rules of MMA, the PFL didn’t permit elbows because of the schedule that fighters fighting in the regular season had to maintain. The thought was that elbows would cause cuts and injuries that would hinder fighters from competing as many times. That said, there’s always been backlash against this because elbows are so important to ground strikes.
Well, the promotion has listened and they’ve made the adjustment. It’s a great start for Davis and the promotion. Let’s be honest, 2024 didn’t go as planned despite what is said on social media. The PFL had so much momentum entering 2024 and really they ran into a ton of roadblocks. Davis outlined these roadblocks in a personal LinkedIn post a couple of days ago.
PFL could have a massive 2025
The Bellator acquisition hasn’t gone well as a whole if you ask me. That’s been one of the biggest issues and I understand that it’s a tricky situation to navigate. When PFL acquired Bellator, they acquired the contracts that were already on the books. Some of those contracts just were not great contracts for a promotion that’s looking to build.
They had to attempt to navigate these contracts while honoring them and staying in the green. They attempted to do this by keeping Bellator it’s own promotion and dubbing it the Bellator Champions Series. They did that while simultaneously running their own promotion while infusing some of the Bellator talent.
It just didn’t work out as well as all were hoping it would. Entering 2025, they can make a few adjustments that could really help themselves out. I know they won’t do this, but I still think the best path is to get rid of the season format altogether. If you want to do a one-off Grand Prix like Bellator used to do, that’s fine, but the season format should go. In addition, the Bellator champions series should go and all the fighters should just be under one collective roof.
The PFL has the roster talent to put on tremendous cards, but the season format makes things far too complicated and it can prevent the best fights from happening. At the end of the day, fight fans are not like regular sport fans. They don’t want to follow a season and a points system. They want to see the best fight the best. That’s what makes fighting so great.
If the right moves are made, this could truly be an incredible year for the Professional Fighters League and nobody is rooting for them more than me. I want to see them rise up to that co-leader status because it’s the best thing for the fighters. I’m happy to see one change has already been made for this year and I’m excited to see what changes could be in the works.