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Jeff Wagenheim, ESPN
The UFC is touting Saturday’s landmark fight card as a night of champions because of the dozen current and former belt-holders who will parade to the Octagon at UFC 300.
One night earlier, the PFL offers up a mini-version.
The second event of the 2024 PFL season (main card on ESPN2/ESPN+ at 9 p.m. ET, prelims on ESPN+ at 6:30) features light heavyweight and lightweight bouts, and the 205-pound competition is basically a champions convention.
Impa Kasanganay, the 2023 season champion, fights in the co-main event. The main event features the 2022 champ, Rob Wilkinson, and the main card opens with the 2021 titlist, Antonio Carlos Jr. The PFL has been in existence for five seasons. The light heavyweight champions in three of those five seasons will be part of the event in Las Vegas on Friday.
Actually, add one more: Sean O’Connell, who won the championship in the PFL’s inaugural 2018 season, will be in his usual spot at cageside, calling all the action on the telecast.
The only PFL light heavyweight champ who won’t be in the building is 2019 winner Emiliano Sordi, who was last seen competing in Jorge Masvidal‘s Gamebred Fighting Championship almost a year ago. Couldn’t someone send Sordi a plane ticket to Vegas just to complete the set?
Here are a couple of storylines to watch for on Friday, both surrounding champions not mentioned above:
Light heavyweight: Big things ahead for Sadibou Sy
Sy has been with the PFL for as long as there’s been a PFL. He won a season championship at welterweight in 2022, made the final in 2023, and qualified for the playoffs the other three years. That success began with a middleweight season in 2018, and Sy has been a 170-pounder ever since. On Friday, he makes his light heavyweight debut against 2023 finalist Josh Silveira.
Jumping from 170 pounds to 205 pounds is no small move. However, Sy faces a different prefight battle with the scale than athletes typically dropping to a lower weight class. He should not be as depleted from excessive dehydration because he won’t have to recover from as significant of a weight cut. And while Sy might be at a disadvantage in bulk and strength in going against naturally bigger men, power has never been the centerpiece of his game. Only two of his eight most recent victories came by knockout. Any power deficiency he might have at light heavyweight could be offset by an edge in speed against bulky opponents.
The new weight class might not even feel so foreign for Sy. Over a decade ago, when competing as a kickboxer, he won multiple world championships in a division just under 190 pounds. Now, at age 37, Sy might find 205 pounds to be closer to his natural weight.
We’ll soon find out.
The other light heavyweight bouts:
Impa Kasanganay vs. Alex Polizzi
Rob Wilkinson vs. Tom Breese
Dovletdzhan Yagshimuradov vs. Jakob Nedoh
Antonio Carlos Jr. vs. Simon Biyong
Lightweight: Golden opportunity for Bellator imports
How wide open is this PFL season? Five of the six weight classes have no defending champion. Among them is lightweight, where the vacancy is due to Olivier Aubin-Mercier announcing his retirement in November, immediately after winning his second straight PFL season championship.
Yet there are a couple of champions in this 155-pound bracket — Bellator champs.
Patricky “Pitbull” Freire, who reigned in Bellator for a year after winning the lightweight title in 2021, makes his PFL debut Friday against Clay Collard. Brent Primus, whose 18-month run with the Bellator belt began in 2017, steps into the PFL cage for the first time to face Bruno Miranda.
Freire’s matchup with Collard signals that PFL brass is looking for an all-action start to the lightweight season. Collard, a veteran of three PFL seasons, is an aggressor who has yet to take his first step backward inside the cage. He made it to last year’s final before running into Aubin-Mercier.
Miranda, competing in his first PFL season in 2023, lost to OAM in the semifinals. It was Miranda’s first defeat since April 2017.
The other lightweight bouts:
Mads Burnell vs. Michael Dufort
Gadzhi Rabadanov vs. Solomon Renfro
Jay Jay Wilson vs. Adam Piccolotti