The Professional Fighters League’s long-promised foray into Africa is now official, and the promotion appears to be pulling out all the stops to ensure it was worth the wait.
On Wednesday, the PFL announced the debut of PFL Africa, with the kickoff event on July 26 in Cape Town, South Africa set to inaugurate a tournament across four events in the second half of the year. It will be the third such regional league for PFL, which currently runs a European tournament as well as PFL MENA, which focuses on the Middle East and primarily Arabic-speaking North Africa.
The new league will be the first to expressly incorporate talent from sub-Saharan Africa. PFL Africa will be led by Francis Ngannou, the Cameroonian-born former Ultimate Fighting Championship heavyweight titleholder and crossover boxing star who signed with PFL two years ago as a competitor as well as chairman of the company’s planned foray into his native continent.
In addition to the inception of PFL Africa and the debut event, the promotion announced several key logistical details. The new venture will work with distribution partners to include Canal+, a French-language broadcast provider with significant reach in Africa, and SuperSport, which will provide mobile platform access to PFL Africa’s product.
While the first PFL Africa tournament will feature eight-man brackets in each weight division composed of native talent, the July 26 debut event will be buoyed by some of the global promotion’s top stars. The ongoing PFL Champions Series “Road to Dubai” tournament is set to furnish five bouts for the card, which will be headlined by former Bellator MMA middleweight champion Johnny Eblen against Costello van Steenis. The co-main event will feature undefeated flyweight Dakota Ditcheva, the biggest rising star of 2024 for PFL and arguably the entire sport, against Sumiko Inaba.
PFL “Road to Dubai” Champions Series 2/PFL Africa 2025 First Round takes place July 26 at GrandWest Arena in Cape Town. While the full lineup has yet to be announced, the card is set to feature the Eblen-Van Steenis and Ditcheva-Inaba fights as well as the following PFL Africa tournament bouts: