Jake Paul, along with Most Valuable Promotions (MVP) co-founder Nakisa Bidarian, is now in charge of Professional Fighters League (PFL) following a “landmark merger” between the two organizations. The new company will operate under the MVP brand with PFL’s John Martin transitioning to Board Member and CEO.
MVP will continue its boxing business under the same banner but operate independent of MVP MMA.
The PFL will move under the brand of MVP to bring together a roster of more than 300 fighters.
“We started MVP to disrupt a broken model,” Paul said.
"We wanted to give fighters fair pay and a bigger, modernised stage to become global superstars. Joining forces with PFL accelerates that vision by a decade.
“To all current MVP and PFL fighters, things just got bigger. To fighters fighting in other organisations, we are open for business when you are contractually free. The time for change is now.”
No idea about that but if MVP has a nice deal locked down with Netflix Im sure they are ok and have money through around for free agents. I would imagine after the numbers they did on netflix for the Rousey Corano fight they have some big $$ for contract with Netflix.
This was always the move if MVP wanted to be a consistent MMA promoter and not just do one-off spectacles on Netflix.
PFL has the infrastructure in place as a full-time promotion, the extra boost from MVP/Paul will help with notoriety and overall brand recognition, and this allows them to pad out any future Netflix cards anchored by whatever UFC washouts are available (or Paul himself) over signing guys for every show.
PFL had a deal too, this is going to be like strikforce/bellator (post tournament format) all over again… throwing huge sums at big names who arent elite anymore. im happy for the fighters, but damn, when will they learn?
Their long-term success is a long shot, but they should put heavy focus on recruiting young, fresh talent rather than paying has-beens or ex-UFC fighters to join the ranks. The UFC sucks balls at finding new talent that is actually talented (for the most part).
Still pissed about Coker and Viacom destroying everything BJORN built to give us a watered down, cheaper, directionless, and poorly promoted product which was basically the remnants of SF in a skin suit.
