The Professional Fighters League welterweight division is a microcosm of the league as a whole, offering sizzling knockouts, a breakout star and more than a little chaos and confusion. Now that Thursday’s PFL 6 is out of the way, let’s pick through the rubble.
Just behind Cooper sits Joao Zeferino, who slid only one spot in the standings after taking care of business with a third-round submission win over Yuri Villefort. Shields, recipient of the aforementioned upset loss to Cooper, did enough to lock down his own playoff berth with a typically workmanlike decision win over Herman Terrado, while Rick Story took full advantage of his matchup with newcomer Carlton Minus, choking the Alaskan unconscious in the second round and vaulting himself into the fourth seed.
Here’s where it gets a bit complicated. Note that there are 13 fighters represented in the graphic rather than 12. Paul Bradley, who had been pulled from the rankings and replaced by Minus when he withdrew from the Story fight, has reappeared. While seven of the eight playoff berths are confirmed to be filled, the final spot has not been officially given to Abubakar Nurmagomedov. Nurmagomedov has the same won-lost record and point total as Shields, but loses the tiebreaker to the American based on having been finished sooner in his loss. It is unknown at this point whether PFL intends to try and book Bradley in a fight at its Aug. 30 “make-up” card, award the playoff spot to one or the other fighter without making Bradley fight again or do something else entirely.
A hearty hat tip to Sherdog’s resident statistics maven, Jay Pettry, for his clarification of the PFL rules. Jay’s most recent Fight Facts column contains a wealth of trivial and not-so-trivial information on PFL 6 and the season.
You can embed this infographic. Copy and paste the code below into your site: