The man known as ‘Mississippi Mean’ has found a new home in the Professional Fighters League.
Jason Knight has joined the Professional Fighters League (PFL) roster.
On Thursday evening, Eric Kowal of MyMMANews.com reported that the former UFC, BKFC fighter signed with the promotion and is expected to make his promotional debut on a card scheduled for Aug. 27. Knight eventually confirmed the report on his social media accounts.
Knight was signed to the UFC in 2015 after amassing an impressive record of 16-1 as a professional fighter. He made his debut at The Ultimate Fighter: Team McGregor vs. Team Faber Finale against Tatsuya Kawajiri, but came up short and lost by way of unanimous decision. Knight would rebound from that loss and earned four straight wins — and three post-fight bonuses — over the likes of Jim Alers, Dan Hooker, Alex Caceres and Chas Skelly between 2016 and 2017.
Knight was unable to keep his newfound momentum going and unfortunately went on a four-fight losing streak that included losses to Ricardo Lamas, Gabriel Benitez, Makwan Amirkhani and Jordan Rinaldi. Several weeks after his fourth loss, ‘Mississippi Mean’ was released from his UFC contract and was in need of a new promotion to compete for. He quickly found one in Bare Knuckle Fighting Championships (BKFC) and signed a one-fight deal to fight fellow former UFC fighter Artem Lobov.
Knight and Lobov headlined BKFC 5 and put on quite a memorable performance over the course of five rounds. Lobov won the fight by way of unanimous decision, but it would not be the last time the pair fought each other. About seven months later, Knight and Lobov competed in a rematch at BKFC 9. This time, Knight stopped Lobov with a fifth-round technical knockout.
Knight returned to mixed martial arts competition earlier this year and returned to the win column with a second-round submission of Cliff Wright at iKon Fighting Federation 5. He fought again at the first ever Gamebred Fighting Championships — a bare-knuckle MMA event put on by UFC veteran Jorge Masvidal — and defeated Charles ‘Felony’ Bennett by first-round rear-naked choke.
At the time of this writing, there is no word on who Knight will be fighting in August when he debuts for PFL. Hopefully more information will be announced in the coming weeks.