Derek Brunson has a lot to look forward to in 2024.
The longtime Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) Middleweight contender joined the ranks of Professional Fighters League (PFL) to close out 2023. After 11 years with the promotion, Brunson, 39, debuted for PFL against former two-time PFL Welterweight champion, Ray Cooper III, where he won a hard-fought unanimous decision at the 2023 PFL Championship late last month (Nov. 24, 2023).
During the 2023 PFL Championship fight week, the promotion announced that it had absorbed Bellator and the entities will come together starting in 2024. Therefore, the full rosters of each promotion are now all PFL’s. The promotion has already stated it will likely do champion vs. champion fights to kick off the year at some point. Without a Middleweight division before bringing in Bellator, it leaves things in a weird spot for Bellator titlist, Johnny Eblen. Brunson arose as a possible next title challenger after his win, however, the former champion, Gegard Mousasi has now revealed that PFL is pushing for the match up instead.
“Update: PFL wants to fight me very soon against @DerekBrunson,” Mousasi tweeted. “Derek refused to accept the fight again. He said he wanted nothing to do with it. 3x he has refused to fight me over the years. The fans lose. Let’s hope PFL can find me a MW. I am ready”
A match up between Mousasi and Brunson is seven years in the making, dating back to their time in UFC. They were supposed to collide at the UFC 200 in July 2016, but Brunson was forced out of the bout and replaced by Thiago Santos. Mousasi went on to knock out the future Light Heavyweight title challenger in one round and has gone 10-3 since then between UFC and Bellator (49-9-2 overall), where he held the Bellator title on two occasions.
Mousasi, 38, is currently on the only losing streak of his legendary 60-fight career after back-to-back unanimous decision losses to the aforementioned champion, Johnny Eblen, and top contender, Fabian Edwards.