PFL 2024: High storylines at heavyweight and ladies’s flyweight

When the PFL introduced its first battle card of 2024 in February, simply a few months had handed for the reason that firm purchased rival Bellator MMA. So the disclosing of a brand new period took on a crossover theme in a pay-per-view occasion billed as PFL Champions vs. Bellator Champions. A number of bouts pit previous or current champions from the 2 promotions in opposition to one another.

Now the PFL is again with the primary card of its 2024 common season, and once more there will be a powerful whiff of Bellator spicing issues up on Thursday (major card at 10 p.m. ET on ESPN2/ESPN+, prelims at 6:30 on ESPN+).

In reality, one of many two PFL weight courses that will likely be contested inside Boeing Middle at Tech Port in San Antonio, Texas, includes a girls’s battle lifted proper out of the Bellator cage. Flyweights Liz Carmouche and Juliana Velasquez met twice over there inside the previous two years. The primary time, in April 2022, Carmouche took the Bellator title from Velasquez by TKO. Eight months later, Carmouche completed the rematch through armbar.

This week’s different weight division tops the cardboard with a few turf battles — outdated guard vs. new blood. Longtime PFL heavyweights Ante Delija and Denis Goltsov have spent a lot time within the SmartCage lately that their battle IQs should have been enhanced, no? And right here they’re extending the PFL vs. Bellator intramural rivalry.

Delija, the 2022 season champion and 2021 runner-up, faces onetime Bellator title challenger Valentin Moldavsky in the principle occasion. Within the co-main, 2023 PFL finalist Goltsov takes on Linton Vassell, whose Bellator run extends again greater than a decade to the promotion’s formative days in Thackerville, Oklahoma.

That is the primary of three straight weeks of PFL playing cards, throughout which the six weight courses will settle the primary half of their season. The chase for the playoffs begins in earnest over the summer season, however for now, listed here are the storylines rising in each of this week’s divisions:

Heavyweight: Not a who’s who, extra of a who’s that?

Thursday’s season-opening major occasion is a right away tone-setter, reminding us that whereas the standard mannequin in fight sports activities is to experience on the broad shoulders of star energy, issues run somewhat in another way within the PFL. Would any battle fan order pizza and invite the gang over for an enormous night time of Delija vs. Moldavsky? Unlikely. However that is not the purpose.

The promoting level of this and different PFL playing cards is the season itself, not the headliners. The stakes behind explicit matchups is perhaps clearer on {the summertime} battle playing cards, when fighters have their second and final probability to qualify for the playoffs. At this level, with everybody 0-0 within the standings, it is all about scoring factors with the earliest stoppage potential, after which making everybody chase you.

Goltsov is aware of how issues work. He began all 4 of his earlier PFL seasons with first-round knockouts, every good for six factors — probably the most a fighter can earn. And whereas he doesn’t enter this season as a defending champ, the fighter who defeated Goltsov within the 2023 closing, Renan Ferreira, shouldn’t be competing this season so he can welcome Francis Ngannou to the PFL on a PPV later within the 12 months. And final week 2021 champion Bruno Cappelozza was faraway from this battle card — and the PFL didn’t disclose whether or not he would return later this 12 months. That leaves Goltsov to moderately take into account himself the surviving king.

Goltsov and Delija are the one holdovers from final season’s roster of 10 heavyweights. How will Vassell, Moldavsky and the opposite Bellator transplants modify to their new environment and navigate by probably 4 fights in seven months? Even with two PFL mainstays sitting on the prime of the cardboard, there is a really feel of newness and limitless chance within the heavyweight division, the place all it takes is one large fist to alter every part.

Flyweight: In different sports activities, they do not play Recreation 3 of a three-game sequence when it is 2-0

The above remark applies to the PFL greater than different battle promotions, as a result of that is the one firm that operates in a season format just like most mainstream sports activities.

So the query is: Why are we beginning the season by watching Carmouche attempt to beat Velasquez a 3rd time?

The easy reply is that they are each a part of the 2024 season and sure would have needed to face one another ultimately. And each earlier Carmouche vs. Velasquez fights delivered championship-level leisure. However why not have Velasquez earn a 3rd shot by successful her means again to Carmouche? It is not just like the PFL did not produce other interesting choices.

Taila Santos, who will make her PFL debut in opposition to Ilara Joanne, is 2 fights faraway from difficult for the UFC title, and a few imagine she did sufficient to go dwelling with the belt on the night time in 2022 when she dropped a cut up resolution to Valentina Shevchenko.

Then there’s former junior world champion kickboxer Dakota Ditcheva, who’s 10-0 in MMA with finishes in all however a type of wins. She has been within the PFL cage earlier than — for a pair of showcase bouts in 2022, then three wins to seize the championship finally 12 months’s PFL Europe girls’s flyweight match. This week she is making her season debut in opposition to Lisa Mauldin.

However why not match Carmouche in opposition to both Santos or Ditcheva, and Velasquez in opposition to the opposite?

Nevertheless the PFL matches up these 4 girls, the inaugural PFL girls’s flyweight season guarantees extra aggressive stability than the light-weight and featherweight girls’s divisions from previous seasons. Kayla Harrison and Larissa Pacheco dominated these competitions (see: “who’s who” reference above), with everybody else miles behind. This 12 months’s $1 million prize appears extra up for grabs.