While the UFC is trying to find new stars and find its way to the white house lawn, the PFL is headed to Africa. A place where no major MMA promotion has touched down since the start of the sport. The inaugural PFL Africa event, taking place in Cape Town, South Africa, features the PFL’s first foray into its new regional tournament format on the undercard.
The main card features a slew of top Bellator and PFL talent, with Dakota Ditcheva making her return against Sumiko Inaba. Along with Bellator middleweight champion Johnny Eblen defending his middleweight title against Costello Van Steenis, on top of other top global MMA talent.
PFL Africa is the way forward to developing top talent worldwide.
Many fighters attempt to immigrate to more prosperous nations, such as the United States and European countries. However, Donn Davis and company are working in an inverted manner compared to the UFC, who attract top talent from around the world and lesser feeder promotions.
Currently, the PFL is attempting to develop home-grown talent and establish regional tournaments and titles to expand the talent pools from each region. With them having successful tournaments for more than two years now with PFL Europe and PFL MENA, now with their third region in Greater Africa, should the PFL succeed, not only would they open the doors for MMA to become a global sport with regional titles and rankings truly, but it would create different levels of skill and pay as in European and Asian boxing many have what considered successful careers despite never achieving world level. So if the PFL succeeds with PFL Africa, a great service will be done to the sport of MMA.
