A Launchpad for Omar El Dafrawy

Omar El Dafrawy has put everything into his combat sports career and now finds himself one step closer to unlocking his hopes and dreams in the Professional Fighters League.

The 29-year-old Egyptian will face Jarrah Al-Silawi in one of two PFL MENA 3 welterweight semifinals this Friday at the PFL MENA Studio in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. There, they are set to duke it out for a spot in the PFL MENA championship and a shot at $100,000. A pro since 2017, El Dafrawy stands on the precipice of the most significant opportunity of his career, with designs on accomplishing much more if all goes according to plan. Though he nailed down his spot in the 170-pound semifinals with a unanimous decision over Anthony Zeidan in July, he prefers to finish fights quickly.

“I’m the type of the guy that I don’t like to hurt people, so if I need to hurt people, I like to do it in stealth mode—put ’em to sleep quickly, shortly, not a lot of battering,” El Dafrawy told Sherdog.com. “I felt like I was sprinting with punches in that last fight. I was thinking, ‘How the f--- is this guy not getting knocked out?’ He was a zombie out there. Props to him. Not a lot of people have that much of a dog inside of him.”

El Dafrawy has enjoyed his experience with the PFL thus far and relishes the opportunities it has provided him and others from the Middle East and North Africa region.

“PFL has proven and shown that it is a very, very fair promotion,” he said. “A lot of promotions are very biased when you’re Arab, when you come from a Muslim country. If you see in other promotions, the fighters, their way to the top, it’s always very hard for them. PFL is coming to the Middle East and saying, ‘We acknowledge you guys. We want to give you the platform. We want to take over the market.’ The Arab world is huge in combat sports, but it’s just not out there. We don’t have the same opportunities.

“[The PFL] coming to the Middle East is a very high-stakes opportunity for Arab fighters,” El Dafrawy added. “I believe that as Arabs we have very strong bloodlines, but at the professional level, no one has ever come in as professional as PFL to the Arab world to date. I don’t want to say names, but I fought in all the biggest Arab promotions. PFL is different.”

El Dafrawy has laid out a clear plan for his future, and it extends well beyond PFL MENA.

“One of the things that I’ve learned throughout my career is not to jump a lot of steps ahead, so right now, I do want to make it global,” he said. “That is the goal. That is the major goal since I started this sport, but let me conquer the region first. Let me show them that I am not who they thought I was before. I feel I can keep proving people wrong again and again, because I am so confident as a human being, and my faith is so big. I go inside the cage, [and] I’m not worried about losing. This is the first step for me.

“I want to get this title in November, go back home and take some time off,” El Dafrawy added. “If I win PFL MENA, I’m done. I’m not doing PFL MENA again. It’s done. Catch me if you can. It’s a one-way train. Let me finish PFL MENA. Let me build myself for PFL global. Maybe headline a couple fights. Maybe do a fight in America. Then when I go into PFL global, I’m going to keep riding the horse. Then maybe I’ll transition back to boxing. I really want to get back into the ring.”

Immediately ahead of El Dafrawy stands Al-Silawi in the PFL MENA welterweight semifinals, and he plans to secure a victory by any means necessary.

“People put so much stress on these things,” he said. “When the cage gets locked and we touch gloves, all the talk is over. Now, it’s action. I focus on doing what I do best inside the cage, and I know I have hands that can take me to the top of the sport.”