Inside the PFL’s matchmaking: Could two champions miss this season’s playoffs?

Ante Delija headlines Friday’s PFL Regular Season: Heavyweights and Women’s Featherweights in Atlanta, and Larissa Pacheco fights in the co-main event. Both are 2022 champions, and both are familiar faces to fans who have followed the fight promotion’s last couple of seasons.

But both Delija and Pacheco need big performances this week at Overtime Elite Arena (main card at 10 p.m. ET on ESPN/ESPN+, prelims at 6:30 p.m. on ESPN+) in order to even make it to the 2023 playoffs.

And the PFL is doing neither fighter any favors with its matchmaking.

The PFL regular season involves two bouts for each of its fighters, during which he or she amasses three points for a victory and bonus points for a finish. Friday’s fights will conclude the regular season for heavyweights and women’s featherweights, with the top four fighters in the standings of each weight class advancing to the playoffs.

But Delija will be fighting for the only time during this regular season, after his scheduled bout in April was canceled due to injury. That leaves him with zero points, putting him behind five heavyweights who scored points in their opening bouts. So Delija will be playing catchup from the moment he steps into the cage.

And across that cage will be Maurice Greene, who sits in second place with five points on the strength of his second-round TKO of Marcelo Nunes back in April.

Why did Delija draw the dangerous Greene rather than, say, the seemingly more vulnerable Nunes? The PFL surely wouldn’t mind having its defending champion in the playoffs, and a matchup with an opponent who’s already shown he can be knocked out would have seemed to give Delija his best chance.

“That wasn’t a consideration,” Peter Murray, CEO of the PFL, told ESPN. “Our No. 1 consideration when booking matchups is to make exciting fights.”

That might sound like pie-in-the-sky idealism, but the philosophy actually is borne out by the matchmaking, which does not appear to favor the better-known fighters.

Beyond the main event, consider the top two women’s fights on the card. Pacheco, who upset Kayla Harrison in last season’s women’s lightweight finale, is fighting at women’s featherweight this season and is hanging on by a thread in the standings, a single point away from elimination. She sure could use a finish on Friday, yet she is matched up with first-place Amber Leibrock, who is coming off a spectacular first-round KO of Martina Jindrova in their season opener.

Pacheco is a prohibitive betting favorite over Leibrock, but why not instead put her in with the woman who lost by spectacular first-round KO, Jindrova? Another option: Why not book Jindrova or Yoko Higashi — also a knockout victim back in April — against high-profile signee Aspen Ladd? The former UFC fighter lost her PFL season opener and is even more desperate for points than Pacheco is. Ladd and her zero points will face Karolina Sobek, who showed resilience in dropping a close decision in her season opener.

Does the PFL not recognize the benefit of having its playoffs include a two-time heavyweight finalist (Delija), a Kayla conqueror (Pacheco) or a UFC pedigree (Ladd)?

“We support all of our fighters equally,” Murray said flatly. “The best of them get into the playoffs, and they have to earn their way.”

Now, one could argue that there are no “name” fighters in the PFL, other than Harrison and the two recent signees for its pay-per-view division, ex-UFC heavyweight champ Francis Ngannou and social media influencer-turned-boxer Jake Paul. So what is really lost if Delija, Pacheco and Ladd all go home after Friday?

Still, MMA matchmaking in general often veers from the straight and narrow path of meritocracy. The UFC’s longtime mantra of “the best fight the best” usually still rings true, for instance, but commerce does take over when the promotion sees an opportunity to cash in on star power. Remember when Jorge Masvidal was handed a second consecutive welterweight title shot, even after being dominated by Kamaru Usman in their first meeting? Remember when the UFC tried to book Brock Lesnar in a heavyweight title bout right out of a years-long retirement? And is there any doubt that a championship fight awaits Conor McGregor should he beat Michael Chandler, even though it would be just his second win in seven years?

The PFL playoffs, like Bellator grand prix tournaments, operate within a bracket, with the path toward a championship set throughout those tourneys. But the PFL’s two-fight regular seasons allow the promotion leeway to set up certain fighters with favorable matchups. And yet the matchmakers haven’t been going there.

“We bring in some fighters from other organizations who arrive with more notoriety than others who are at a different stage of their career. But one thing applies to every fighter who steps in our cage: The PFL season is the toughest test in all of MMA,” Murray said, referring to the promotion’s rigorous schedule that demands four fights in eight months from those who reach the championship final. “Established fighters like Rory MacDonald and Anthony Pettis experienced the challenge of that firsthand in past seasons, and new arrivals like Shane Burgos are experiencing it now.”

MacDonald, a former Bellator welterweight champion and UFC title challenger, went 2-4 in two PFL seasons before retiring last year. Pettis, a former UFC lightweight champ, went 1-4 in the PFL before stepping away from the season format to try his hand at boxing. Meanwhile, the lesser-known fighters who handed both of them their final defeats are still chasing the season-ending $1 million prize.

As for Burgos, who came over from the UFC ahead of this season, he headlines next week’s PFL card, which wraps up the regular season with lightweight and welterweight bouts. Burgos is 0-1 after losing his debut, in which he was matched against last season’s lightweight champ, Olivier Aubin-Mercier. That loss puts Burgos in seventh place in the standings. His last-chance matchup on June 23 will be against Yamato Nishikawa, who in 31 pro fights has been knocked out just twice and never been submitted.

So the PFL season’s most high-profile import will be desperately seeking the bonus points that come with a finish, while in with an opponent who almost never gets finished.

Just like this week.