The Professional Fighters League was one of the first promotions to take definitive action amid the coronavirus outbreak.
After putting the season on hold, PFL decided to cancel their entire 2020 season, with all contracted fighters to receive monthly stipends.
It wasn’t an easy decision to make, but PFL president Ray Sefo says due to the nature of the promotion’s format, it would have been too difficult to try and resume operations with so much uncertainty surrounding the global pandemic.
“The decision was a difficult one because there’s so many fighters of course,” Sefo told MMA Junkie. “But when we looked at this world crisis and where it was heading, it just wasn’t safe for our fighters to even get ready and at that point when we made the decision, there was just so many people getting affected and people dying left, right and center which was pretty sad.
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“So the safety of our fighters and our staff was the most important thing that played a big part in making that decision and we had to push the season as you know. The fighters, they gotta fight five times to get to the finals but also, the season takes like eight to nine months to complete so we just knew time-frame wise, the safety of our athletes and of course fans and everybody else involved, it was just the best thing to do.”
The focus will now be on the 2021 season, as the promotion has no intentions of holding one-off shows in the meantime. PFL has recently signed the likes of former Bellator welterweight champion Rory MacDonald, Olivier Aubin-Mercier, Justin Willis and Tyler Diamond, who will all have to wait before getting to make their promotional debuts.
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