The PFL had their World Championship event from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia last week and the promotion crowned six world champions and handed out six one million dollar checks. It was the promotion’s sixth season championship event after kicking things off in 2018. The promotion didn’t have a 2020 season due to covid.
The PFL from day one has tried to be different with it’s format. For years, fighting whether it be boxing or MMA has been run by promoters and matchmakers putting fights together and trying to put on the biggest show in the world for fans. The Professional Fighters League wanted to be different.
They wanted to take the matchmaking out of it and mainstream the format to appeal to the general sports fan who understands the format of a regular season and playoffs. This format is what has made them unique. That said, as time continues to go on, it’s time to look at revising their current business model and format.
After six years, the PFL has seen some tremendous growth, but they are not even in the same dimension as the UFC. I like Donn Davis (Founder) and Peter Murray (CEO), but the claims of being a co-leader are extremely inaccurate. These claims largely came after the promotion purchased Bellator last year and aimed to become a co-leader with the UFC after combining the second and third largest promotions in MMA.
Failed Bellator Champions Series
This year was a huge year for the PFL to show that they can be a potential co-leader in the MMA space. Unlike their claims, they were not a co-leader entering the year. Far from it. This was their year to prove that they can start to become that with time and their year just fell completely flat.
They wanted to start the year strong with a PFL vs. Bellator champions card and in theory, it was a huge opportunity to come out of the gates swinging. However, the event fell flat and only featured one true champion versus champion matchup which paired 2023 heavyweight champion Renan Ferreira against Bellator champion Ryan Bader.
For 2024, PFL launched the Bellator Champions Series and the hope was to have multiple events throughout the year operating Bellator as it’s own promotion while under the PFL banner. However, they ran into a lot of issues. There have been cancelled events and they’ve only had five total events this year.
The initial idea was to have title fights on every single card thus the name, “Champions Series”. However, they didn’t even have a title fight on the fifth card because Johnny Eblen – Fabian Edwards fell through. Ultimately, that middleweight title fight was booked for the PFL Super Fights event on October 19th.
When Bellator was acquired, The Professional Fighters League gained a ton of talent like champions Usman Nurmagomedov, Patchy Mix, Patricio Pitbull, Corey Anderson, Johnny Eblen, and Cris Cyborg. The fact that all of those fighters outside of Johnny Eblen who fought twice have only had one fight in 2024 is a travesty.
Patchy Mix and Patricio Pitbull have vocally expressed their frustrations with the PFL on how they’ve ran Bellator. Fighters have been wasted this year and it honestly couldn’t have gone worse from an optics standpoint. At the end of January, there is another Bellator event featuring lightweight champ Usman Nurmagomedov taking on rising star Paul Hughes. In my opinion, I would make this the final Champions Series event.
PFL Needs Change
PFL has a very strong talent pool, that is certainly not their problem. Their problem is they have far too many avenues for all their talent and it makes their product watered down. Donn Davis has often knocked the UFC for having too many cards which waters down their product. However, you can easily say that the many avenues and format of the PFL completely waters down their product as well.
I mean you have the main season, Super Fights PPV, Bellator Champions Series, Europe, Mena, and the Challenger Series. They haven’t even launched Africa yet which they are planning to do. In my opinion, they need to scrap the season format, and bring all of the main roster people together under one roof.
I’m all for keeping Europe, Mena, Africa, and the Challenger Series as developmental sections. However, Bellator needs to be scrapped altogether as does the PFL Regular Season. The Super Fights name needs to go as well. The promotion simply needs to go by The Professional Fighters League and it needs to spend 2025 building the best cards possible.
They can have a split model where they have some of their cards broadcasted on ESPN+ while major cards are on ESPN+ PPV. They need to move to a traditional format for professional fighting. This will allow them to maximize their talent and avoid injuries that can develop from a grueling regular season and upsets which spoil major matchups that the promotion is banking on materializing.
I completely respect their efforts to be different, but it’s time to move on. They have the talent to make a great product and I think they can if they use it properly. If they continue down their same path, they are never going to come close to the UFC. They need storylines and they need to focus on matchmaking the best fights possible to generate interest. The general public is not going to follow a MMA regular season. They want to be sold a story and they want to be sold on the fighters. The current format doesn’t do that and it’s time to change things up.