Tomorrow night, the PFL will have it’s second playoff event of the 2024 season. The action goes down in Hollywood, Florida as the light heavyweights and lightweights take center stage. The lightweights will go first as two men will look to punch their ticket towards the championship event in the fall.
Kicking things off for the lightweights will be a matchup between former Bellator champion and number one seed Brent Primus (14-3, 1 NC) and last year’s runner-up Clay Collard (25-13, 1 NC). Starting with Collard, he is definitely looking to make a statement tomorrow night to change the recent narrative surrounding him.
Collard had three big wins leading up to the PFL Championships last year but ran into a buzzsaw in Olivier Aubin-Mercier. OAM retiring after last year gave new life to the lightweights and Collard wanted to take advantage. However, it’s been mixed results during the regular season.
Collard started extremely strong with a second round TKO over former Bellator champion Patricky Pitbull. However, he followed that with a loss against Mads Burnell in a largely forgettable fight. Now, he’ll look to bring the excitement and fire to Brent Primus.
Primus has looked great so far during the 2024 PFL Regular Season. Primus earned the top overall lightweight seed after two second round submission wins over Soloman Renfro and Bruno Miranda. He’s hoping to take another step towards a second world title tomorrow night against Collard.
PFL Playoffs
The second lightweight matchup of the evening pairs Gadzhi Rabadanov (22-4-2) against Michael Dufort (13-5). Starting with Dufort, he won a fight last year on The Challenger Series, but never got called up for the regular season. The PFL brought him back for the regular season this year and he started strong submitting Mads Burnell in the second round of their fight.
That was his fifth straight win. However, he suffered a big setback against Adam Piccolotti in his last fight. He lost by split decision and only ended the regular season with five points. That said, with how crazy the second regular season event was, five points ended up being enough for both Dufort as well as Clay Collard.
Standing across from Dufort tomorrow is a man who went 2-0 during the regular season. Gadzhi Rabadanov was signed by Bellator back in 2021 and was 5-0 with the promotion before they were purchased by the PFL. After the acquisition, promotion officials put Rabadanov in the regular season and he’s won both of his fights by decision. He’s only lost once since 2017 and he’ll look to punch his ticket to the championships tomorrow night.