Francis Ngannou and Renan Ferreira will battle for a brand new championship belt this Saturday.
The massive heavyweights headline this weekend’s PFL pay-per-view event, and battle for the PFL Superfight heavyweight title in Saudi Arabia. The bout will be Ngannou’s first for the promotion since vacating the UFC heavyweight title to sign with PFL.
On Monday, PFL revealed the new Superfight titles that Ngannou and Ferreira — along with Cris Cyborg and Larissa Pacheco — will be fighting for. Check out the new belts below.
What it’s all about on October 1️⃣9️⃣th
Everything you need to know about the PFL Super Fights Belt
[ #PFLSuperFights | #BraceForImpact | Sat, Oct 19th | 4PM ET | BUY NOW https://t.co/kWyJTEGRvW] pic.twitter.com/q0QVTefMDs
— PFL (@PFLMMA) October 14, 2024
Ngannou competes in an MMA fight for the first time since defeating Ciryl Gane in a UFC heavyweight title defense at UFC 270 in January 2022. Since then, “The Predator” has competed in the boxing ring, losing a pair of bouts to top-ranked heavyweights Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua.
Ferreira has stopped his past four opponents, including Bellator heavyweight champion Ryan Bader in 21 seconds at PFL vs. Bellator in February.
Cyborg makes her promotional debut, and first MMA appearance in over a year. The Bellator women’s featherweight champ picked up two boxing knockouts in her two combat appearances in 2024.
Pacheco enters the matchup coming off of back-to-back $ 1 million PFL championships, including a victory over now-UFC fighter Kayla Harrison at the PFL World Championships 2022 event.
Mo Jassim and Craig Jones in happier times. | Screengrab, YouTube
There’s surprising news in the grappling scene, as ADCC will be replacing Mo Jassim, the public face of its company.
Soon after the 2024 ADCC World Championships — and its public feud with the Craig Jones Invitational (CJI) — the prestigious grappling promotion will now be replacing its head organizer. Indeed, Mo Jassim — who has been the promoter and public face of the Abu Dhabi Combat Club (ADCC) these last several years — is no longer with the company.
ADCC to replace head organizer Mo Jassim
Jassim announced the surprising news on his private Instagram page, stating that he and ADCC have parted ways.
“l would like to announce that I have decided to step down as the head organizer of ADCC,” Jassim wrote. “I would to like thank Sheikh Tahnoon for giving me the opportunity to be the only person to organize 3 ADCC worlds. Thank you to Guy Neivens for allowing me to move up from wristband boy to head organizer. Thank you to Seth Daniels and Shawn Fowler, we gave every event we organized everything we had and I am very proud of the work we accomplished. Thank you to FloGrappling for supporting me and ADCC, they were great to deal with.
“Thank you to all of the athletes that I have worked with the past 20 years. Also thank you to all of the media who supported us and helped promote ADCC and the sport.
“The sport has never been in a better place to break through mainstream, which has always been the end goal. My loyalty will always be to ADCC but any organizer or event that will grow the sport has my full support if needed. I look forward to being just a fan again.”
ADCC was always highly regarded in the grappling scene, but Jassim truly deserves a lot of credit for significantly growing its events and helping the sport reach a much wider audience during his tenure.
Brazilian jiu-jitsu (BJJ) shows used to only appeal to fellow practitioners of the sport, but the professional grappling scene has since grown exponentially. ADCC’s biennial world championships was at the forefront of that, with Jassim playing a big role not just in keeping elite talent, but also in significantly improving production value to appeal to more casual audiences.
It’s after that growth was achieved, where concerns about lack of improvement in athlete pay were raised. This sparked the ADCC and CJI rivalry, with Jones eventually starting his own promotion to disrupt the sport and highlight these issues. He hosted CJI on the same city and same weekend as ADCC 2024, then poached several BJJ stars by offering show money that matched ADCC’s tournament prize, plus $ 1 million to its winners.
The situation was tense.
Nevertheless, the rivalry ended up helping many athletes get paid significantly better that weekend. CJI gave out record purses in BJJ, and because of the competition, ADCC also increased pay for women and offered show money for the first time to retain key stars.
Perhaps it is also in part due to these events that led to ADCC restructuring?
Fired? Craig Jones and Mo Jassim continue to trade barbs
Jassim recently stated he’d want to do things differently “if” he gets a chance to host another ADCC World Championships, so perhaps the writing was already on the wall.
As expected, though, Jones continued to jab at Jassim online, stating it wasn’t his choice to “step down” from ADCC.
“You can’t fire me, I quit,” Jones wrote on Instagram.
After seeing this, Jassim decided to challenge Jones to a fist fight as he responded in the comments section.
Mo Jassim challenged BJJ star Craig Jones to a boxing match.
Jones went on to write a comment and film a whole skit in response, taking another jab at ADCC athlete pay and making people compete for exposure and “prestige.”
View this post on Instagram
A post shared by Craig Jones (@craigjonesbjj)
There’s still no word on Jassim’s replacement, but Jones didn’t stop his trolling there. The CJI promoter says he’s willing to take over Jassim’s role himself.
“I’ve decided to take over ADCC and restore it to its former glory,” Jones wrote in a series of jokes and jabs at Jassim. “I will even allow Mo Jassim (to) be the wristband boy again. I don’t hold a grudge.”
ADCC’s next world championships is targeted for 2026. Trials and qualifications will happen the year before that though, so it might not take very long for their backers in Abu Dhabi to make a decision on their next head organizer. It’ll also be very interesting to see if there will be major changes to how the promotion is run under different leadership.
For the latest Brazilian jiu-jitsu (BJJ) and grappling-related news click here.
Alex Pereira and Jamahal Hill | Photo by Jeff Bottari/Zuffa LLC via Getty Images
Alex Pereira didn’t impress Jamahal Hill at UFC 307.
This past weekend, Pereira picked up his third win of 2024, successfully defending his light heavyweight title with a fourth-round TKO of Khalil Rountree Jr. After the fight, Hill — who was in attendance — was caught on camera with a mocking yawn, which prompted Pereira to clown Hill in his post-fight press conference. But Hill stands by it.
“It’s crazy how y’all see a clip with no context, no nothing, and y’all just be ready to talk shit and just attack and come disrespectful as ever,” Hill said on his YouTube channel. “It’s hilarious… I never said the fight was boring…
“It was an entertaining fight. You saw some adversity, you saw adjustments and game plan. That’s one thing I will give Alex credit for, he adjusted his game plan a few times in that fight until he ultimately found his way to the finish and to the victory. So I will give him credit for that.
“Now, to the yawn at the end. Was it entertaining? Yes. Was I impressed? No. I’m not impressed… Did I see anything in the cage that scares me or that I didn’t expect to see? No.”
Pereira knocked Hill out in the first round at UFC 300 back in April, and since then the former light heavyweight champion has continuously tried to pick a fight with “Poatan.” And Hill still seems committed to that plan.
“To be honest with you, I’m glad Alex won,” Hill said. “I’m happy Alex won, because I want him to be as big of a giant in your minds as possible the next time I face him.
“At this point, I don’t care, he can go Magomed [Ankalaev] next, if he fights him, and he can lose. That’s the fight that I want. I don’t want the belt. I want that fight.”
Since UFC 300, Pereira has added two more knockout wins to his resume, with successful title defenses against Jiri Prochazka and now this recent victory over Rountree. In contrast, Hill has yet to step back into the cage since his loss, but “Sweet Dreams” promises that’s coming soon enough.
“As far as what’s next, a contract is already on the way, name is already hit the desk,” Hill said. “Touch-Em-Up University will be in session, class will be in session soon.”
A welterweight fight with fireworks written all over it has just been added to UFC 310 as Bryan Battle looks to extend his four-fight unbeaten streak when he faces Randy Brown on Dec. 7 at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
Multiple people with knowledge of the promotion’s plans confirmed the matchup to MMA Fighting on Monday after Battle’s management team initially announced the fight.
Battle scored his latest victory at UFC Paris in September when he took out Kevin Jousset with a vicious second round TKO and improving his overall record with the promotion to 6-1 with one no contest along the way. Following his most recent win, Battle hoped for an even bigger matchup in his next fight and the UFC obviously granted his wish.
Meanwhile, Brown looks for his fourth win in a row in the welterweight division after taking out Elizeu Zaleski dos Santos, Muslim Salikhov and Wellington Turman in consecutive appearances. Brown was briefly linked to a potential fight against streaking welterweight contender Carlos Prates but the Brazilian ended up booked against Neil Magny in November instead.
Now Brown faces off with Battle in a potential fight that could earn the winner a top 15 ranking.
UFC 310 is headlined by a pair of title fights as Belal Muhammad defense his welterweight crown against Shavkat Rakhmonov while Alexandre Pantoja faces former RIZIN champion Kai Asakura in a flyweight title bout.
Reinier de Ridder is ready for a fresh start after leaving his former home at ONE Championship and inking a deal to join the UFC roster.
There’s no secret that things gotten contentious between the Singapore based promotion and several fighters over the past couple of years but de Ridder isn’t trying to bash his former employers now that he has a new home. Like any job, de Ridder says there was good and bad about his years spent in ONE Championship but he definitely knew it was time for a change.
“It’s been good for a long time and it’s been bad for a pretty long time now as well,” de Ridder told MMA Fighting. “I think they’re struggling in a sense and some stuff is not being handled the way it should be but it is what it is.
“I had a very good run in the beginning. They gave me a lot of fights. In ONE, I was able to make it a full time thing with fighting. So I’m very grateful for that part. But the last couple of years weren’t that great.”
After fighting three times in 2022, de Ridder’s activity dwindled without a single fight in 2023 and then only competing once in 2024 before ultimately leaving the promotion. He did make an appearance in 2023 for a grappling match under the ONE umbrella but his activity was obviously far greater earlier in his career.
When his contract ended, de Ridder fought once for UAE Warriors before signing his deal to join the UFC roster. He never knew for certain if he was going to fight for the UFC but de Ridder admits every fighter dreams about that opportunity at one time or another.
“I’m looking forward to getting in there,” de Ridder said about his UFC debut. “Looking forward to getting some activity. I’m very happy, very psyched, it’s cool.
“It’s the league we all look up to. Every fighter wants to fight in the UFC. Every fan wants to watch UFC. It’s been asked a lot of times over the years so it’s very cool to finally be there. Of course, it was clear I wasn’t going to keep going with ONE. But there were different options. But when you start fighting, when you start this crazy career, everybody wants to fight in the UFC. I’m getting to the later stages of my career so this was the moment to either go get it or never do it again. I had to go to UFC.”
Despite holding two titles simultaneously in ONE, de Ridder admits the announcement that he signed with UFC got him more attention than anything he experienced with his former promotion.
“That’s the crazy part,” de Ridder said. “I went through every stage of an MMA fighter’s career. I went from unranked to title challenger to two-division champion and it always got some traction. People liked it and respected it.
“But now I just started all over again. So I go fight unranked again [in UFC] and it’s a bigger deal than becoming a two-division champion. It’s funny.”
As far as the biggest differences between the two organizations, de Ridder pointed to a pair of changes that he’s actually excited about now that he’s with the UFC.
“The UFC is the UFC of course, so it was always the goal,” de Ridder said. “Always in the back of my mind. There’s a lot of different perks over ONE. Next to that, the weight thing is a bit more clear, there’s drug testing. It’s just better.”
When it comes to weight classes, ONE actually instituted much different rules than those used by the UFC or other promotions in the United States. ONE has hydration testing in hopes of curbing extreme weight cuts and the divisions there were altered so every weight class is actually different than those in other promotions.
For instance, de Ridder previously reigned as champion at both middleweight and light heavyweight but in ONE middleweight is from 185 to 205 pounds while light heavyweight is 205 to 225 pounds. In organizations like the UFC, middleweight stops at 185 pounds before moving up to light heavyweight.
De Ridder says the early implementation of the hydration testing and the weight class changes were good at ONE but over time he feels the program just didn’t work.
“The idea of the hydration test was amazing,” de Ridder said. “In the beginning, they had some secondary measures to be sure that you really were around that weight when you fought as well. But over the years, those were eroded a bit and the guys just kept getting bigger and I was the only dummy who still made the 93kgs (205 pounds) with breakfast and some water. Some stuff’s changed there on this point.
“Look I’m not looking forward to the weight cut and there is still a way to negate the weight cut. There is a way to stop all the fighters from cutting weight but the hydration test is not enough, as you’ve seen.”
When it comes to drug testing, ONE Championship actually stated as far back as 2019 that athletes were being tested but de Ridder says his bigger concerns came down to the out-of-competition testing required under the UFC’s anti-doping program.
“In this regard, the UFC is the place to go,” de Ridder said. “America is the place to be for fighting clean athletes. That’s just better.”
Perhaps what he’s happiest about with his move is that the 34-year-old Dutch fighter is getting back to business sooner rather than later with his first fight in the UFC booked for Nov. 9 against Gerald Meerschaert.
He pays credit to his manager Ali Abdelaziz for wasting no time getting the deal done and helping him book a fight and de Ridder promises that he’s going to soak in every aspect of this opportunity.
“I’m very, very grateful for this,” de Ridder said. “Ali is working his magic.
“It’s pretty cool. This is something I put my mind to, to try and enjoy all this stuff as well. I’ve always been a bit of a hater with all the interviews and all the people coming up to me and asking me stuff. But I’m trying to bit more grateful about this stuff.”
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