The card for Week 1 of the upcoming
Professional Fighters League season has undergone several
changes, the organization announced Tuesday.
UFC and Bellator veteran Blagoy
Ivanov will replace Bruno
Cappelozza and face Sergey
Bilostenniy in a preliminary heavyweight bout. Meanwhile,
Ilara
Joanne will step in for former Bellator title challenger
Denise
Kielholtz and lock horns with ex-UFC contender Taila
Santos in a flyweight clash.
Advertisement
Finally, a proposed bout pitting Kaytlin
Neil against Veta
Arteaga has been removed from the event, while a bantamweight
showcase fight between Bryce
Meredith and Ty Johnson has been added to the card.
PFL 1 takes place on April 4 at the Boeing Center in San
Antonio, Texas and features heavyweights and women’s flyweights. In
the main event, Ante Delija
will meet Valentin
Moldavsky.
A veteran of 26 professional bouts, Ivanov will return to action
for the first time since July 2023, when he dropped a unanimous
decision to Alexander
Romanov at UFC on ESPN 48. The 37-year-old Bulgarian previously
competed for World Series of Fighting and the PFL from 2015 to
2017, winning WSOF heavyweight gold in June 2016. He is coming off
a 3-5 stint with the UFC.
Bilostenniy, meanwhile, split a pair of fights under the Bellator
banner in 2023, most recently scoring a first-round stoppage of
Kasim
Aras this past September. The 28-year-old Russian owns an 11-3
mark overall, with eight victories coming via knockout or technical
knockout.