Professional Fighters League (PFL) is making moves within the mixed martial arts (MMA) landscape. It’s just a matter of how big it ends up being.
It was announced that Bellator was acquired by PFL early last week (Nov. 20, 2023), widening the talent pool within the promotion. PFL Founder, Donn Davis, highlighted during the announcement that with the acquisition, he believes PFL is now on the verge of becoming an MMA “co-leader” alongside the longstanding giant, Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC).
Former two-division UFC titleholder and current color commentator, Daniel Cormier, couldn’t disagree more, however.
“I don’t know how you’re going to be the co-leader,” Cormier said on The MMA Hour. “You’re not going to be the co-leader. I’m sorry. The UFC is the standard. The UFC is the standard. They’ve got too big a head start. The level of fighters is just too high and it’s a well-oiled machine.
“People will say, ‘Oh, this guy is a company man!’ Yes. They write me checks, a lot,” he laughed. “But here’s the deal, the UFC has developed a product that is so far ahead of everything else, it’s crazy. From the production side, to the personnel and staff side, to the fighters, there’s nothing that compares. It’s not close, and it’s not going to be close.”
In terms of time as a company, UFC is unbeatable in North America, coming into existence in 1993. PFL absorbing Bellator isn’t the first time companies have combined in the sport as most notably, UFC has acquired several promotions throughout its existence.
PRIDE Fighting Championship was the first to fall to UFC in the late 2000s before World Extreme Cagefighting (WEC) came shortly after. Last but not least was Strikeforce in the early 2010s, leading Cormier, who was the Heavyweight champion, to UFC.
“It’s just not the truth,” Cormier said about Davis’ co-leader statements. “When I was in Strikeforce in the beginning, I remember we would be on CBS, and I would just rush to find the ratings to see how it did. I had to know how it did, because you wanted to feel like it was catching up, or you were on that level, because you knew, back then, UFC numbers were crazy. Pay-Per-View numbers they were doing back then were crazy. You were like, ‘Man, if Strikeforce can do 5 million views on cable, that’s a big number.
“And it was not ever really that,” he concluded. “But you always looked for some sort of metric that put you on the same level as the UFC, and there’s really just not any. From crowd attendance to gates to PPVs, there’s just not a metric that’s going to show that you’re on that level.”