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Check out these photos from Oleg Popov vs. Davion Franklin at 2024 PFL 4 in Uncasville, Conn.
Check out these photos from [autotag]Oleg Popov[/autotag]’s win over Davion Franklin at 2024 PFL 4 at Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville, Conn. (Photos by Cooper Neill, PFL MMA)
It’s not every day that a heavyweight misses the divisional limit, as one did ahead of PFL’s return Thursday.
The PFL regular season continues Thursday with 2024 PFL 4, and all fights are now locked in after the official weigh-ins where one combatant – a heavyweight – missed the mark.
The event, which takes place at Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville, Conn., features heavyweights and women’s flyweights in their first fights of the season.
In the main event, former Bellator interim heavyweight champion [autotag]Valentin Moldavsky[/autotag] (13-3) fights [autotag]Linton Vassell[/autotag] (24-9) for the third time. The co-main event features fast-rising star [autotag]Dakota Ditcheva[/autotag] (11-0) against fellow muay Thai specialist [autotag]Chelsea Hackett[/autotag] (4-2-1).
All fighters except one made weight Thursday, as heavyweight [autotag]Davion Franklin[/autotag] tipped the scale at 268.5 pounds. His opponent, [autotag]Oleg Popov[/autotag] weighed 245 pounds – 23.5 pounds less.
The full 2024 PFL 4 official weigh-ins results include:
MAIN CARD (ESPN/ESPN+, 9 p.m. ET)
PRELIMINARY CARD (ESPN+, 5:30 p.m. ET)
* = Franklin missed heavyweight limit by 2.5 pounds
For more on the card, visit MMA Junkie’s event hub for 2024 PFL 4.
The PFL’s return next month, and debut at Bellator’s former East Coast home base, has seen a pair of changes at heavyweight.
The PFL’s return next month, and debut at Bellator’s former East Coast home base, has seen a pair of changes at heavyweight.
[autotag]Daniel James[/autotag] (15-7-1) is out of his fight against [autotag]Tyrell Fortune[/autotag] (13-2) on the main card. Fortune now will take on [autotag]Marcelo Golm[/autotag] (10-5). And [autotag]Marcelo Nunes[/autotag] (11-2) is out of his bout against [autotag]Oleg Popov[/autotag] (17-1). Popov now will take on replacement [autotag]Davion Franklin[/autotag] (6-2).
A Bellator official informed MMA Junkie of the new matchups Monday. The start of the PFL’s second half of the regular season takes place June 13 at Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville, Conn. (ESPN/ESPN+), and features heavyweights and women’s flyweights who will attempt to qualify for the four-person postseason.
Fortune was supposed to fight Golm this past November at UFC 301 in Chicago, but Fortune became sick on fight day after the event started and the bout was scrapped. Fortune also was supposed to fight James to open the regular season, but had to withdraw. Consequently, he has no points in the standings, which are led by Valentin Moldavsky with 6 points. Golm lost his opening bout of the regular season.
Popov has 5 points after a second-round stoppage in his first fight of the season. Franklin will be fighting for the first time in the regular season.
With the changes, the PFL Week 4 lineup now includes:
MAIN CARD (ESPN, 9 p.m. ET)
PRELIMINARY CARD (ESPN+, 5:30 p.m. ET)
Find out how much weight all 32 fighters at Bellator 300 gained from the Friday morning official weigh-ins to Saturday night fights.
In California, fighters have their weights checked on the day of competition – not just when they have to hit their marks on the scale.
In 2017, the California State Athletic Commission put a plan in place to try to cut back on excessive weight cutting. Within those rules was a cap on how much a fighter could gain from the official weigh-ins to the fight.
If a fighter gained more than 10 percent back before the bout, the commission then could make a recommendation that he or she move to a higher weight class. If a fighter gained more than 15 percent, the commission had plans in place to potentially cancel fights.
At Bellator 300, which took place this past Saturday in San Diego, 14 of the 32 fighters on the card gained more than 10 percent of their weight back. Three of those 14 exceeded the 15 percent threshold. MMA Junkie obtained a list of fight-night weights Monday from the CSAC.
Check out the weight gains and percentages for all 32 fighters on the card at Pechanga Arena.
Referee Blake Grice said the Bellator 300 fight-ending sequence “really was not that complicated.”
SAN DIEGO – [autotag]Davion Franklin[/autotag] wasn’t pleased with referee Blake Grice at Bellator 300, but he didn’t have a leg to stand on.
Franklin lost by first-round technical submission to Slim Trabelsi this past Saturday at Pechanga Arena. The finish came at the 3:09 mark when Franklin verbally submitted.
After an inside trip from Trabelsi took down Franklin, Franklin could be seen tapping his left knee upon landing on his back as if to indicate he’d been injured. Grice let the action continue for another five seconds before he stopped the fight, leaving observers to wonder what happened.
Making things more confusing was the fact that Franklin immediately shook his head at Grice, appearing to protest the stoppage, but the veteran referee explained to MMA Junkie that the fight-ending sequence was “fairly textbook” from his perspective.
“The fighter got taken down with an inside trip,” Grice said. “The other knee buckled. So when he went down, he tapped. He tapped, and I gave it a second. I said, ‘Are you tapping?’ He said, ‘My knee, my knee!’ That’s a verbal submission, so I stopped the fight.
“Doctors came in. His knee had gone out. I think it may have gone back in, I’m not real sure. But he stood up and he goes, ‘Yeah, I’m fine now.’ And I was like, ‘The fight’s over. That’s a verbal submission.’ He goes, ‘I didn’t know that.’ I said, ‘Well, that’s a tough lesson and I’m sorry, but there’s protocols in place, and I followed them.’ It just is what it is.”
Heavyweight Slim Trabelsi scores the win on his Bellator debut. #Bellator300 @MonsterEnergy Prelims fueled by @Cardenas_Market
https://t.co/NxwCKFPRok pic.twitter.com/FMSlTjAB7k
— Bellator MMA (@BellatorMMA) October 8, 2023
Grice said he immediately noticed Franklin tap on his own knee, which would’ve been enough to interpret as a submission. But Grice said he took those extra few seconds to ensure that was Franklin’s intention.
“I gave him one step further to verify that’s what he wanted to do, and he screamed, ‘My knee,'” Grice said. “That’s when I took that as a verbal submission.”
While the fight-ending sequence seemingly confused Franklin, Grice was certain about his officiating.
“That really was not that complicated,” Grice said. “That was fairly textbook. It confused him – didn’t confuse me that much. It was very simple.”
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For more on the card, visit MMA Junkie’s event hub for Bellator 300.
Check out all the facts and figures from Bellator 300, which saw Usman Nurmagomedov, Cris Cyborg and Liz Carmouche exit as champs.
The landmark Bellator 300 event took place Saturday at Pechanga Arena in San Diego, and all three champions who entered the event left with the belts around their waists.
[autotag]Usman Nurmagomedov[/autotag] (18-0 MMA, 7-0 BMMA) retained his lightweight belt in the main event and advanced to the grand prix final, [autotag]Cris Cyborg[/autotag]’s (27-2 MMA, 6-0 BMMA) continued her dominant legacy to retain women’s featherweight gold in the co-headliner, and women’s flyweight champion [autotag]Liz Carmouche[/autotag]’s (20-7 MMA, 7-0 BMMA) scored a stoppage in the main card opener.
For more on the numbers to come out of the event, check below for MMA Junkie’s post-event facts from Bellator 300.
Davion Franklin didn’t want to lose to Marcelo Golm – of course. But he found a way to make something good out of it.
SAN DIEGO – [autotag]Davion Franklin[/autotag] didn’t want to lose to Marcelo Golm – of course.
But in a classic situation of a fighter learning more from a loss than a win, Franklin said he figured out that he wasn’t ready to stop learning yet when he had his first setback. He rebounded from that Golm loss earlier this year, and nnow he wants to get another streak going against a fellow prospect, Slim Trabelsi.
Franklin talked about those things and more at Thursday’s Bellator 300 media day in San Diego.
Check out the full interview in the video above. Bellator 300 takes place Saturday at Pechanga Arena in San Diego. The main card, which features three title fights, airs on Showtime following prelims on MMA Junkie.
For more on the card, visit MMA Junkie’s event hub for Bellator 300.
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All the UFC and Bellator fight announcements that were first reported or confirmed by MMA Junkie in the past week.
MMA fight announcements are hard to follow. With so many outlets and channels available, it’s nearly impossible to organize.
But here at MMA Junkie, we’ve got your back.
Each week, we’ll compile all the newly surfaced fights in one spot. Every Monday, expect a feature listing everything you might have missed from the UFC or Bellator.
Here are the fight announcements that were broken or confirmed by MMA Junkie or officially announced by the promotions from Aug. 21-27.
Davion Franklin sent a stern message to the heavyweight division after rebounding at Bellator 295.
HONOLULU – [autotag]Davion Franklin[/autotag] sent a message to the heavyweight division after rebounding at Bellator 295.
Franklin (6-1 MMA, 6-1 BMMA) defeated Kasim Aras by unanimous decision this past Saturday at Neal S. Blaisdell Arena. An amped-up Franklin called out everybody from Daniel James, to Gokhan Saricam, to Marcelo Golm, and Tim Johnson.
“All y’all heavyweights, I’m on your ass, bro,” Franklin told MMA Junkie and other reporters at his post-fight news conference. “Y’all don’t want this as bad as me. I guarantee you: If I see any of y’all in the future, y’all know what’s up. Y’all know how I’m coming. Off with all y’all heads. I swear I’m crushing all of you, that’s facts. … I want all of y’all head tops, trust me. It ain’t sweet. Y’all don’t want this as bad as I do. None of y’all called anybody out. Y’all all just like, ‘Oh, whoever Bellator gives me.’ I’m putting a name on all of you. I will take all of you out. I swear to God.”
Prior to losing to Golm, Franklin was undefeated. He admits he felt a little pressure to have to bounce back against Aras.
“It was a little weird to me, because I’m not going to lie: My last fight, I was extremely confident,” Franklin said. “So for me to lose a fight that I was extremely confident in, it kind of messed with my mental a little bit to be honest with you.”
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For more on the card, visit MMA Junkie’s event hub for Bellator 295.
Patchy Mix is firmly in the Bellator record books after a perfect knee made him $1 million richer at Bellator 295.
Bellator 295 took place Saturday at Neal S. Blaisdell Center in Honolulu and marked the second night of the promotion’s weekend doubleheader in Hawaii.
The final fight of a loaded week proved to be the most memorable, because [autotag]Patchy Mix[/autotag] (18-1 MMA, 7-1 BMMA) scored one of the greatest knockout highlights in company history when he flattened [autotag]Raufeon Stots[/autotag] (19-2 MMA, 7-1 BMMA) with a picture-perfect knee to the jaw knockout just 80 seconds into their main event. The nasty finish not only won him the interim bantamweight title, but he is the last man standing in the bantamweight grand prix, winning $1 million after completing the eight-man field.
For more on the numbers behind the headliner, as well as the rest of the card, check below for MMA Junkie’s post-event facts from Bellator 295.
