As the 2025 PFL season kicks off, is it make or break time for MMA’s co-leaders?

Whether it’s a good idea or not to trot out MMA’s greatest relics is a matter of personal taste, but for better or worse the GFL is creeping — very slowly — onto the fight scene. We’ve heard all the jokes. Geriatric Fight League. Only five fighters among the current batch of heavyweights on the roster fall under the age of 40. The other seven carry an average age of 43, with the eldest being Aleksei Oleinik, who is 47 years young.

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Oleinik isn’t the oldest in the GFL, though. That distinction belongs to Yoel Romero, who is documented to have been born a few months earlier than the “Boa Constrictor.” Of the seven men’s weight classes, a collection of 84 men from bantamweight to heavyweight, only six are under the age of 30. The other 78 have much longer teeth. Andrei Arlovski, who is on Team Los Angeles, competed at UFC 28 nearly a full year before 9/11.

In other words, what could possibly go wrong?

And why bring up the GFL’s free-wheeling gamble at recycling legacies, for a column about the PFL? Because that’s where potential disaster looms! Because curiosity is the first step in achieving pure, borderline-spiritual morning-after guilt, which is of course the sport within the sport of MMA.

And because, well, it’s at least a talking point.

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You won’t find as many talking points heading into the 2025 PFL tournament, which kicks off Thursday night in Orlando. In fact, the buzz has been next to nil, which is a little worrisome for the so-called co-leaders in MMA promotion. It’s been dubbed March Madness x MMA, a single-elimination tourney featuring 64 fighters spread over eight weight classes (the seven men’s and women’s flyweight). More simply put, eight miniature eight-person brackets, all slugging it out in the ultimate battle of attrition for the chance at $500,000.

Not a million dollars this time. Five-hundred thousand. Half of what we’re used to. This is one of the many things that have changed, and uncertainty becomes part of the PFL’s storyline.

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In past years, the PFL’s biggest, most compelling draw were those seven figures at the end. Where it lacked an identity, it made up for in prize money. The $1 million reward was a great, big, dangling carrot, because we knew how much harder that kind of cash would be to come by in the UFC. Kayla Harrison was a millionaire before she ever set foot in the UFC’s Octagon because she’d come from the playgrounds of the PFL. That at least could be considered a “positive reflection.”

Now — even if the PFL claims to be distributing $20 million in total for the tournament — that distinction is gone, meaning it’s left to the fighters themselves to create the hook. It doesn’t help that none of the participants are named Dakota Ditcheva, perhaps the most marketable star on the PFL’s roster. None are named Francis Ngannou, who is among the very best heavyweights in the world (if not the best). None are even named Paul Hughes, who took Usman Nurmagomedov to the wire in one of the great inspiring performances back in January.

Those fighters belong to a special stratosphere in the PFL’s (ever mysterious) grand scheme, which to many fans has come to resemble purgatory. When will we see any of them again? When is the next PFL Champions Series? That’s been the new real million-dollar question. The 39-year-old Cris Cyborg reminded everyone of the kind of killer she is by dramatically overcoming Larissa Pacheco back in October, and here we are nearly six months later and … crickets.

She obviously won’t be competing in the tourney. Nor will Patricio Pitbull, who jumped ship for the UFC after a very public falling out with the PFL. Many of the bigger Bellator names are now in other organizations or at large, nowhere to be found in the PFL ranks.

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Instead, the tournament will be comprised of a hodgepodge of respectable names who fall into a select group of competitors — Bellator holdovers, professional tournament limboists, woodwork fighters with key associations (wasn’t Rob Wilkinson Israel Adesanya’s first fight in the UFC?), former UFC fighters, Russians, second-winders, and Mads Burnell. If there are blood feuds in these brackets, you’re going to have to research them yourself. Right now, the central idea is that you lose you go home.

Go home? That seems kind of stark to a fighter just trying to make a living. Especially when so many of these fighters just want to fight.

Not that there aren’t new concepts in play this year. Gone is the regular season format — a smart move because if there’s anything MMA can’t stand, it’s foreplay — in are the elbows. Elbows are totally legal for this tourney, which is a welcome change. The training wheels didn’t help sell the PFL to MMA fans used to the rules as they stand.

So, there’s that…

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Yet the major story is where PFL stands as a whole. More directly: Is 2025 the beginning of the end? To judge by the overall dissension among the fighters in 2024, optimism isn’t at an all-time high. There are plenty of warning signs that the problems are outpacing the positive vibes.

It’s not just that so many fighters came to distrust the promotion over the past year, butting heads over contractual disputes while wasting away on the sidelines. It’s the red flags that come with restructuring, when company theories are having a hard time becoming fact. When cutbacks become a reality. It’s the blurred lines between a roster purge and an exodus, which is never a good sign. Patricio Pitbull made it clear he wanted out, and the PFL, to its credit, ultimately granted his wish.

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The thing is, when indifference sneaks into equation, fight brands have a tendency of going away. And part of the problem with the PFL — which purchased Bellator at the end of 2023 and had massive plans — is that indifference quickly became the norm. There were some good inroads made in Europe, especially when Ditcheva beat UFC veteran Taila Santos in November to become one of the breakout stars of 2024, yet four months later she is out of sight, out of mind.

The momentum that came from Ngannou’s triumphant return to MMA back in October? Feels like an eon ago. And wish-casting for a fight with UFC champ Jon Jones does nothing to close the distance.

What helps differentiate the UFC from other promotions is that it’s set up to be a naturally forward-thinking machine. Big fights are fun, but it’s the fixation on “what’s next” that makes it thrive. Stars are made within the possibility of just how far they can take things within that structure. The endless projection of what comes next feeds everything, week to week, with fans, media and the fighters themselves.

With the PFL, the “what’s next” has been nearly impossible to track — to the point that the question itself begins to feel a little grim. There are those of us who hope it’s not the beginning of the end. Even if the idea of being a “co-leader” in MMA came with a wink, a second platform in the sport is a necessary thing. Fighters need options, and the UFC shouldn’t be left in control of so many fates. PFL bought Bellator to combine forces in bringing the MMA world that other option.

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On Thursday night, from the Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida (the prelims airing live on ESPN+ at 7 p.m. ET, and the main card on ESPN+ and ESPN2 at 10 p.m. ET), PFL’s main event will feature a bout between former Bellator welterweight champions Jason Jackson and the Andrey Koreshkov, with a co-main clash between bantamweights Adam Borics against Jesus Pinedo.

Fine fights to kick things off, for anybody who cares to tune in.

If you don’t, the bigger battle remains the one the PFL is fighting.