The
Professional Fighters League’s long-promised foray into Africa
is now official, and the promotion appears to be pulling out all
the stops to ensure it was worth the wait.
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On Wednesday, the PFL announced the debut of PFL Africa, with
the kickoff event on July 26 in Cape Town,
South Africa set to inaugurate a tournament across four events in
the second half of the year. It will be the third such regional
league for PFL, which currently runs a European tournament as well
as PFL MENA, which focuses on the Middle East and primarily
Arabic-speaking North Africa. The new league will be the first to
expressly incorporate talent from sub-Saharan Africa. PFL Africa
will be led by Francis
Ngannou, the Cameroonian-born former
Ultimate Fighting Championship heavyweight titleholder and
crossover boxing star who signed with PFL two years ago as a
competitor as well as chairman of the company’s planned foray into
his native continent.
In addition to the inception of PFL Africa and the debut event, the
promotion announced several key logistical details. The new venture
will work with distribution partners to include Canal+, a
French-language broadcast provider with significant reach in
Africa, and SuperSport, which will provide mobile platform access
to PFL Africa’s product.
While the first PFL Africa tournament will feature eight-man
brackets in each weight division composed of native talent, the
July 26 debut event will be buoyed by some of the global
promotion’s top stars. The ongoing PFL Champions Series “Road to
Dubai” tournament is set to furnish five bouts for the card, which
will be headlined by former Bellator
MMA middleweight champion Johnny
Eblen against Costello
van Steenis. The co-main event will feature undefeated
flyweight Dakota
Ditcheva, the biggest rising star of 2024 for PFL and arguably
the entire sport, against Sumiko
Inaba.
PFL “Road to Dubai” Champions Series 2/PFL Africa
2025 First Round takes place July 26 at GrandWest Arena in Cape
Town. While the full lineup has yet to be announced, the card is
set to feature the Eblen-Van Steenis and Ditcheva-Inaba fights as
well as the following PFL Africa tournament bouts:
Heavyweight:
Jashell
Ticha Awa (3-1) vs. Justin
Clarke (2-0)
Abdoullah
Kane (3-0) vs. Mohammad
Ben Yahia (9-4)
Bantamweight
Nkosi
Ndebele (8-3) vs. Mahmoud
Atef (5-2)
Simbarashe
Hokonya (5-0) vs. Abderrahman
Errachidy (4-1)