What is The Professional Fighters League?
The Professional Fighters League (commonly referred to as PFL) is an American based mixed martial arts league that was founded back in 2018. PFL is the first major MMA organization where individual athletes compete in a regular season, post season, and championship. Usually MMA organizations run on a year round basis and haven’t adopted a structure that emulates other major sports leagues like the NFL, NHL, and NBA.
PFL is owned by MMAX Investors and their events are broadcasted on the prestigious sports based network ESPN. Peter Murray is their CEO and Ray Sefo serves as the organizations president. The organization hosted their first event on June 7, 2019 at Madison Square Garden in New York City. Each of the champions in the six weight classes won a championship prize of $1,000,000.
Fights in The Professional Fighters League take place in a unique ten sided cage (a decagon).
8 fighters with the most points in each of the weight classes at the end of the regular season advance to the playoff rounds. Each fighter has two fights during PFL’s regular season which takes place over the course of April, May, and June. The point system grants the winner of the fight 3 points and the loser of the fight receives 0 points. There’s also bonus points if you finish the fight, finishing the fight in round 1 will get you 3 bonus points, round 2 gets you 2 bonus points, and round 3 gets you 1 bonus point on top of the 3 points you get for winning. So, if you finish a fight in the first round, then you’ll receive 6 points for that win. Also, a fight that finishes in a draw will result in each fighter getting 1 point.
Winning = 3 points
Bonus points:
Round 1 = 3 Points
Round 2 = 2 Points
Round 3 = 1 Point
Each fighter is then seeded in standings for their weight class based on their total points. The single elimination PFL playoffs then lead to the PFL world championship match-up. The winner of each title bout is crowned PFL World Champion of their respective weight class and earns a 1 million dollar prize.
