Kayla
Harrison will begin her run for a third consecutive
Professional Fighters League lightweight championships in earnest
on Aug. 20.
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The card for the PFL playoff event at the Copperbox Arena in London
has been finalized, and Harrison will square off against Czech
kickboxer Martina
Jindrova in the evening’s featured bout. On the other side of
the women’s 155-pound bracket, top seed Larissa
Pacheco will face Helena
Kolesnyk.
PFL 9 will also include the men’s featherweight semifinals, as
Chris
Wade takes on Brendan
Loughnane, and Ryoji Kudo
meets Bubba
Jenkins. The main draw airs at 3 p.m. ET/noon PT on ESPN and
ESPN+.
“Heading to London is huge for the expansion of the League,” said
PFL president of fighter operations Ray Sefo. “We
are bringing our brand of MMA to the UK and I’m sure they are going
to be as excited as I am to see elite fighters like Kayla Harrison,
Chris Wade and Brendan Loughnane compete with so much on the
line.”
One of the evening’s “opening card” bouts will feature the debut of
Englishwoman Dakota
Ditcheva, a 23-year-old three-time muay Thai world champion
with a 5-0 mark in MMA. She’ll take on Hassner in a preliminary
bout at flyweight.
“We are excited to add Dakota to the global PFL talent roster,”
Sefo said. “Dakota’s outstanding skillset and ability, along with
her natural charisma fit perfectly with the PFL brand of MMA. We
believe the PFL is uniquely placed to take her journey forward on a
global scale. Coming from a line of elite uay Thai practitioners,
we have confidence in Dakota to go to the very top with the PFL and
continue her family’s legacy.”
PFL 9 will stray from the typical format in that the main card will
be preceded by a five-bout “opening” card and followed by a
four-bout lineup of what the promotion labels on its website as
“qualifiers,” which are expected to be for spots in the 2023
season. The opening card airs on ESPN+ at 1 p.m. ET/10 a.m. PT,
while qualifiers begin at 5 p.m. ET/2 p.m PT.