Billy's MMA Blog

PFL 2024 season is over with the PFL Championship event completed on November 29th. The 2025 season had many positives and negatives. These included PFL acquiring Bellator and Ngannou’s PFL debut, among other positives. Nevertheless, there are plenty of negatives too. With the 2025 season right around the corner, there are plenty of ways to improve the PFL product.

1. Simplify PFL

PFL does too much with PFL Championships, PFL vs Bellator, Bellator Championships. Abundance of brands to dissuade casual fans to spending few hours on there Saturday to tune into PFL.

Suggestion for PFL (Peter Murray and Don Davis) is to combine PFL and Bellator into one brand/roster.

This approach is less confusing. It has consistent PFL scheduled events. This avoids having brands all over the place with the twice a year Bellator Championship Series and PFL Championship. Keeping consistent scheduled events 2x or 3x a month definitely attract more fans into PFL product.

Interesting concept for being the Champions league of MMA but this isn’t soccer this is MMA. Need story lines, rivalries and stars to make your promotion just like how boxing, UFC and Pride worked.

2. PFL Promoter

PFL needs a promoter or a face similar UFC has with Dana White. Great promoter with great knowledge of the fight game Donn Davis and Peter Murray are two really successful men in there fields but with all respect have no clue about the fight game. Love for them to humble themselves and choose a real promoter.

Promoter suggestions Scott Coker- former Bellator promoter who in the last few years created second best MMA roster and ran solid promotion under many switches from network to network. Some fighters like Johnny Eblen, Patchy Mix, AJ Mckee, Patricio Pitbull, Vadim Nemkov considered the best fighters in there weight classes. Under PFL ownership, Billions of dollars in funding and working with ESPN Scott Coker can promote PFL into new ERA.

3. Add Divisions/Treat Talent Well

PFL acquired the Bellator roster. They gained some of the best fighters. The roster includes Johnny Eblen, Patchy Mix, Gegard Mousasi, Kyoji Horiguchi, Sergio Pettis, and Raufeon Stots. Great fighters being poorly misused in prime years because PFL doesn’t have Middleweight, Bantamweight and Flyweight Division.

Mousasi, Horiguchi, Pettis, Larkin, Amosov, Pico and others will leave if they don’t add divisions or treat their talent well.

Poorly using the #1 Bantamweight and #1 Middleweight fighter in the world is a bad look. PFL promotes themselves as having the best roster in the world. However, Eblen and Mix don’t have a division to fight in. They rely on the Bellator Championship series shows or special PFL events. For example Patchy Mix, Usman Nurmagomedov, Raufeon Stots fought once in 2024. Your best talent should be fighting 2x a year and be aware when their next fight is…

PFL acquired a deep talented Bantamweight Division. However, they don’t have a division for these fighters to compete in. This situation leaves the fighters released or disarrayed. Fighters have it hard enough being punched in the face. They endure serious training. They don’t want to be worried when they’re fighting

2025 PFL should add Middleweight, Bantamweight, and Flyweight (Men and Woman) divisions. Keep top fighters updated about upcoming fight dates. Consistently schedule top fighters at least twice a year on PFL events.

4. Star Driven

PFL Championship Co-Main Event has superstar in the making with Dakota Ditcheva the phenom winning the PFL Woman’s Flyweight Championship against former UFC Woman’s Flyweight Title Challenger in Taila Santos.

Defeating her in impressive fashion with ease piecing apart Santos on the feet that lead to 2nd found finish to the body.

PFL hit a gold mine with her a gift to push PFL to next level brand wise! With Peter Murray’s marketing experience as Under Armour VP of Marketing, he can catapult Dakota as the face of PFL. He can push her to become the PFL superstar they desperately need.

Besides Ditcheva, there are potential stars like Doumbe, Paul Hughes, Abdoul Abdouraguimov, and Shamil Musaev. They can become real stars with great marketing, smart management, and perfect markets to fight in. For example, Doumbe can continue to hit the Paris market. Paul Hughes could become the next star of Ireland. Musaev might hit Poland after fighting for KSW.

Combat Sports is very star driven and PFL needs superstars/stars to take the promotion to the next level.

5. Storytelling is Key

Marketing a brand like Nike, Apple, Coca-Cola brand storytelling is so important to spread the message and brand awareness to billions of people around the world. Steve Jobs did it with his beautiful presentations & Nike did it with Jordan and Dana White does it with UFC.

Dana White/ UFC marketing team does masterful job marketing there fighters on the global stage can make a guy like Alex Pereira who barley speaks a word a star, GSP into the 2000/2010 superstar who doesn’t talk trash and Khabib the wrestling heavy fighter into superstar.

UFC has great storytelling from the PPV previews, my favorite the UFC embedded’s, UFC Countdown shows or Dana White selling fights on ESPN or on podcast. The great storytelling helped Conor vs Khabib, Liddell vs Couture, Jones vs Cormier be the massive PPV draws they are and significantly impact UFC.

PFL needs to follow suit. I see they’re trying with different content shows, but they need more. Every single event should promote the headlining stars like Ditcheva. She is a pupil and prospect at American Top Team. Ditcheva is an inspiration for little girls back in England. Cedric Doumbe spends time with Mbappe. He is a French comedian and a world-class fighter. Francis Ngannou supports charities back in Cameroon. Laundry list of storytelling opportunities to expand the brand of fighters and exciting upcoming fights.

Great storytelling can really help PFL become a more popular promotion. Interesting rivalries present a great opportunity to sell a title fight. Usman vs Hughes (Russia vs Ireland 2) is a good example.