Jeff Wagenheim, ESPN
Ante Delija headlines Friday’s PFL Ordinary Season: Heavyweights and Girls’s Featherweights clash card in Atlanta, and Larissa Pacheco fights within the co-main match. Each are 2022 champions, and each are usual faces to fanatics who’ve adopted the clash promotion’s final couple of seasons.
However each Delija and Pacheco want fat performances this month at Time beyond regulation Elite Area (leading card at 10 p.m. ET on ESPN/ESPN+, prelims at 6:30 p.m. on ESPN+) to bring to even create it to the 2023 playoffs.
And the PFL is doing neither fighter any favors with its matchmaking.
The PFL ordinary season comes to two bouts for every of its combatants, throughout which she or he amasses 3 issues for a victory and bonus issues for a end. Friday’s fights will conclude the ordinary season for heavyweights and girls’s featherweights, with the manage 4 combatants within the standings of every weight magnificence advancing to the playoffs.
However Delija will likely be combating for the one moment throughout this ordinary season, nearest his scheduled bout in April was once canceled because of shock. That leaves him with 0 issues, hanging him at the back of 5 heavyweights who scored issues of their opening bouts. So Delija will likely be taking part in catchup from the pace he steps into the cage.
And throughout that cage will likely be Maurice Greene, who sits in moment position with 5 issues at the energy of his second-round TKO of Marcelo Nunes again in April.
Why did Delija draw the damaging Greene in lieu than, say, the apparently extra inclined Nunes? The PFL indubitably wouldn’t thoughts having its protecting champion within the playoffs, and a matchup with an opponent who’s already proven he may also be knocked out would have appeared to give Delija his absolute best probability.
“That wasn’t a consideration,” Peter Murray, CEO of the PFL, informed ESPN. “Our No. 1 consideration when booking matchups is to make exciting fights.”
That would possibly pitch like pie-in-the-sky idealism, however the philosophy in reality is borne out by way of the matchmaking, which doesn’t seem to bias the better-known combatants.
Past the principle match, believe the manage two girls’s fights at the card. Pacheco, who dissatisfied Kayla Harrison in final season’s girls’s light-weight finale, is combating at girls’s featherweight this season and is placing on by way of a tale within the standings, a unmarried level clear of removal. She certain may just utility a end on Friday, but she is matched up with first-place Amber Leibrock, who’s coming off a impressive first-round KO of Martina Jindrova of their season opener.
Pacheco is a prohibitive making a bet favourite over Leibrock, however why no longer rather put her in with the girl who misplaced by way of impressive first-round KO, Jindrova? An alternative choice: Why no longer hold Jindrova or Yoko Higashi — additionally a knockout sufferer again in April — in opposition to high-profile signee Aspen Ladd? The previous UFC fighter misplaced her PFL season opener and is much more determined for issues than Pacheco is. Ladd and her 0 issues will face Karolina Sobek, who confirmed resilience in losing a alike determination in her season opener.
Does the PFL no longer acknowledge the advantage of having its playoffs come with a two-time heavyweight finalist (Delija), a Kayla conqueror (Pacheco) or a UFC pedigree (Ladd)?
“We support all of our fighters equally,” Murray mentioned flatly. “The best of them get into the playoffs, and they have to earn their way.”
Now, one may just argue that there aren’t any “name” combatants within the PFL, alternative than Harrison and the 2 fresh signees for its pay-per-view category, ex-UFC heavyweight champ Francis Ngannou and social media influencer-turned-boxer Jake Paul. So what’s actually misplaced if Delija, Pacheco and Ladd all move house nearest Friday?
Nonetheless, MMA matchmaking on the whole regularly veers from the directly and slim trail of meritocracy. The UFC’s longtime mantra of “the best fight the best” generally nonetheless rings true, as an example, however trade does to enter when the promotion sees a chance to money in on big name energy. Take into accout when Jorge Masvidal was once passed a moment consecutive welterweight identify shot, even nearest being ruled by way of Kamaru Usman of their first assembly? Take into accout when the UFC attempted to hold Brock Lesnar in a heavyweight identify bout proper out of a years-long leaving? And is there any hesitation {that a} championship clash awaits Conor McGregor must he beat Michael Chandler, even if it could be simply his moment win in seven years?
The PFL playoffs, like Bellator magnificent prix tournaments, function inside of a bracket, with the trail towards a championship poised all through the ones tourneys. However the PFL’s two-fight ordinary seasons permit the promotion leeway to arrange sure combatants with favorable matchups. And but the matchmakers haven’t been going there.
“We bring in some fighters from other organizations who arrive with more notoriety than others who are at a different stage of their career. But one thing applies to every fighter who steps in our cage: The PFL season is the toughest test in all of MMA,” Murray mentioned, relating to the promotion’s rigorous agenda that calls for 4 fights in 8 months from those that achieve the championship ultimate. “Established combatants like Rory MacDonald and Anthony Pettis experienced the challenge of that firsthand in past seasons, and new arrivals like Shane Burgos are experiencing it now.”
MacDonald, a former Bellator welterweight champion and UFC identify challenger, went 2-4 in two PFL seasons ahead of retiring final future. Pettis, a former UFC light-weight champ, went 1-4 within the PFL ahead of stepping clear of the season structure to aim his hand at boxing. In the meantime, the lesser-known combatants who passed either one of them their ultimate defeats are nonetheless chasing the season-ending $1 million prize.
As for Burgos, who came around from the UFC forward of this season, he fights on later month’s PFL card, which wraps up the ordinary season with light-weight and welterweight bouts. Burgos is 0-1 nearest dropping his debut, during which he was once matched in opposition to final season’s light-weight champ, Olivier Aubin-Mercier. That loss places Burgos in 7th position within the standings. His last-chance matchup on June 23 will likely be in opposition to Yamato Nishikawa, who in 31 professional fights has been knocked out simply two times and not been submitted.
So the PFL season’s maximum high-profile import will likely be desperately in the hunt for the bonus issues that include a end, life in with an opponent who virtually by no means will get completed.
Identical to this month.
