It continues to be a big week of change for the PFL. Earlier this week, we learned that the promotion was officially doing away with Bellator as a standalone entity and they were moving all the fighters under one roof. Yesterday, the promotion officially granted Bellator great Patricio Pitbull his official release after multiple requests.
This morning, the promotion officially announced something I’ve been waiting for them to do for a long time. The PFL is officially moving away from the regular season format. In it’s place, founder Donn Davis announced the World Tournament that will feature eight weight classes with eight fighters in each weight class.
PFL World Tournament
The PFL World Tournament will start on April 3rd and the first round will go from the 3rd through May 1st. The single-elimination tournament will feature brackets at Heavyweight, Light Heavyweight, Middleweight, Welterweight, Lightweight, Featherweight, Bantamweight, and Women’s Flyweight.
When there was the season format, fighters were having to fight four times to win the championship. In addition, the points system would sometimes leave fighters out who might’ve gone 2-0 in the regular season but didn’t accumulate the amount of points needed to make the four-fighter playoffs.
That has all gone away. The PFL World Tournament will run like a traditional Grand Prix like we’ve seen in Pride and Bellator. Fighters who win advance and that’s a good thing. The tournament will run through August 21st. Another change the promotion made is that instead of one giant championship event at the end of the tournament, there will be three separate championship events spreading out the action across the month of August. Absolutely love this change by the promotion.