Living in Ireland and covering combat sports for a living, you’d think I’d rejoice in a malnourished MMA weekend that allows for a full night’s sleep, but you’d be wrong.
Over a decade of diminished dozing has taught me that it isn’t a choice. It’s a sickness. And nothing has highlighted that sickness quite like realizing Saturday was supposed to mark GFL’s debut. On a weekend light on MMA, the freak-show loving hardcore crowd I proudly belong to would’ve been glued to our screens.
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The pièce de résistance of this meme-fueled double-header was Tony Ferguson vs. Dillon Danis — a bout that doesn’t quite reach the giddy morbid highs of Eddie Hall vs. Mariusz Pudzianowski or Eddie Hall vs. Two Tiny Guys, but it came pretty damn close.
Of course, there was something frightening about a legend like Ferguson taking his eight-fight skid into a contest against the oft-ridiculed résumé of a formerly celebrated jiu-jitsu player Danis. But the mockery the bout drew on announcement had a communal feel — and an unspoken guarantee that we’d all show up anyway. Not in support, but in solidarity of disbelief.
The GFL dream
It’s never a great sign when one of the biggest talking points around a new promotion is, “Will it even happen?” — but that was the dominant narrative surrounding GFL when founder Darren Owen announced his intentions on “The Ariel Helwani Show” back in December.
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From the jump, the team-based format drew ridicule, with MMA’s grizzled memory bank immediately pointing to the ill-fated IFL (hat-tip to Uncrowned’s own Ben Fowlkes). While the promised 50/50 revenue split with fighters was a commendable idea, the absence of a broadcast partner raised the obvious question — what revenue?
To be fair to GFL, they must have pitched well — the roster was nothing to scoff at, boasting a vast array of former UFC champions (albeit many well past their sell-by dates). But cracks appeared early when multiple announced fighters publicly claimed they were still under contract with rival promotions.
We got our first real glimpse of the GFL’s surreal appeal during January’s “live” draft. What should’ve been a hype-building event instead became a masterclass in collective cringe, as the 80% AI-generated production had fans stampeding to social media to join the pile-on. The most talked-about moment? Not a fighter, coach, or team — but a rap song (yet another IFL nod), its chorus echoing through the chaos.
“Protect your neck… wooooooaahhh!”
UFC dominance
While my overview of the promotion may seem trite, I genuinely believe a lot of fans would have tuned in if Saturday’s debut event went ahead. In an age where the gap between the UFC and every other promotion appears to be growing every weekend, the ability to put on an event that inspires genuine curiosity is no mean feat.
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The Patchy Mix to UFC story and the postponement of PFL’s biggest event of the year — starring Dakota Ditcheva and Johnny Eblen — are the latest marks against the MMA co-leader in what seems to be a conveyor belt of critical developments throughout 2024-25.
The promotion’s best work has been done on the European scene. I marveled at the event I witnessed in Paris, where 20,000 people showed up at the Accor Arena to heap adoration on Cedric Doumbé. Similarly, in Belfast last weekend, Paul Hughes’ homecoming felt like a real moment for the brand. However, those in the U.S. simply have to take my word for it as there was no legal avenue to watch either event in “The Land of the Free.”
Donn Davis’s “co-leader” moniker is drawing more and more ridicule as the hits keep coming for PFL, but there is a lot happening in Europe with Oktagon regularly booking gargantuan venues and the kings of the freak-show, KSW, drawing the intrigue of the world with their recent Pudzianowski vs. Hall offering.
PFL hosting the early knockout rounds of this year’s global tournament at the Universal Studios soundstage point to a lack of interest U.S. fans had in attending the events. It also underlines the dominance the UFC boasts in its homeland, where TKO continues breaking gate records at every venue it visits, often to the confusing delight of those in attendance who whooped and hollered when the dollar-pinching tally was announced.
Oh hey — TKO just broke another gate record while you were reading this. (Georgiana Dallas/WWE via Getty Images)
(WWE via Getty Images)
Attention
In the end, GFL didn’t happen.
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Ferguson didn’t fight Danis and we didn’t get an opportunity to collectively chortle to our hearts’ content — and perhaps we should be sad about that. Even though the promotion was doomed to fail, it did something the overwhelming majority of promotions outside the UFC cannot do.
It got people talking.
As the UFC effortlessly widens the gap, the No. 2 spot in MMA remains a strange, shifting thing. It’s not about talent. It’s not about titles. It’s about attention — and occasionally, about tapping into the bizarre, junk-food part of our fandom that just wants to see what happens when chaos is left unsupervised.
Ferguson vs. Danis could have very well been a car crash, but deep down we know we would have all been there, bracing for impact together. In that shared, guilty curiosity, there was a chance — however fleeting — that the GFL just might have worked, if only for one weekend.
