Whether it’s a good idea or not to trot out MMA’s greatest relics is a matter of personal taste, but for better or worse the GFL is creeping — very slowly — onto the fight scene. We’ve heard all the jokes. Geriatric Fight League. Only five fighters among the current batch of heavyweights on the roster fall under the age of 40. The other seven carry an average age of 43, with the eldest being Aleksei Oleinik, who is 47 years young.
Oleinik isn’t the oldest in the GFL, though. That distinction belongs to Yoel Romero, who is documented to have been born a few months earlier than the “Boa Constrictor.” Of the seven men’s weight classes, a collection of 84 men from bantamweight to heavyweight, only six are under the age of 30. The other 78 have much longer teeth. Andrei Arlovski, who is on Team Los Angeles, competed at UFC 28 nearly a full year before 9/11.
In other words, what could possibly go wrong?
And why bring up the GFL’s free-wheeling gamble at recycling legacies, for a column about the PFL? Because that’s where potential disaster looms! Because curiosity is the first step in achieving pure, borderline-spiritual morning-after guilt, which is of course the sport within the sport of MMA.
And because, well, it’s at least a talking point.
You won’t find as many talking points heading into the 2025 PFL tournament, which kicks off Thursday night in Orlando. In fact, the buzz has been next to nil, which is a little worrisome for the so-called co-leaders in MMA promotion. It’s been dubbed March Madness x MMA, a single-elimination tourney featuring 64 fighters spread over eight weight classes (the seven men’s and women’s flyweight). More simply put, eight miniature eight-person brackets, all slugging it out in the ultimate battle of attrition for the chance at $500,000.
Not a million dollars this time. Five-hundred thousand. Half of what we’re used to. This is one of the many things that have changed, and uncertainty becomes part of the PFL’s storyline.
In past years, the PFL’s biggest, most compelling draw were those seven figures at the end. Where it lacked an identity, it made up for in prize money. The $1 million reward was a great, big, dangling carrot, because we knew how much harder that kind of cash would be to come by in the UFC. Kayla Harrison was a millionaire before she ever set foot in the UFC’s Octagon because she’d come from the playgrounds of the PFL. That at least could be considered a “positive ...
