PFL vs ONE Championship: Who is number 2? (Comparison Post)



The Professional Fighters League and ONE Championship are considered the two promotions in the running for being the second biggest MMA promotions in the world. While I personally think that KSW or Oktagon being excluded from this conversation does not make sense, I want to compare the PFL and ONE on the basis of their presentation and where they stand today as companies.

PFL
The PFL is different from most promotions, as they heavily use a tournament format for their shows. Recently they dropped their original season format, which I think was for the better as it limited matchmaking and took forever to play out. Now they are doing regular fights alongside tournaments in each weight division with the winners becoming champion and receiving 500 thousand dollars. This is down from the previous prize of a million dollars that was awarded for winning their Season. As for their roster, since buying Bellator the PFL has a much stronger roster than ever. They do not have many huge names, but they have a good amount of former UFC fighters with name value alongside legitimately some of the best prospects in the sport such as Usman Nurmagomedov, Paul Hughes, and Dakota Ditcheva. 

On the negative side, there have been complaints from many fighters under contract to the PFL regarding not being given fights and being kept out of the cage. Specifically, fighters who came over from Bellator who's contracts PFL took over have been very vocal, with some publicly asking for their release. ONE Championship has had the exact same issues recently as well. Outside of contract issues, the PFL also has a real issue with the slow pacing of their cards, and their promotion or lack thereof for their events is a serious issue.

ONE Championship
ONE is based in Singapore, but as of now they run most of their events out of Thailand. They differentiate themselves from other promotions by not just focusing on MMA, as they also have Kickboxing and Muay Thai fights. Because of where they hold their events, the typically air at odd times, at least in the United States. Unlike the PFL, ONE has very fast paced events with little time in between fights. They also have a very strong roster overall, but their MMA roster is somewhat lacking with only a few names.

As mentioned, ONE has the same issues with contracts that the PFL has, but on top of that it has been reported and alluded to by reporters and people close to fighters that their contracts are also very one-sided and borderline exploitative. They have also begun to focus less and less on MMA, as compared to a few years ago they have far less MMA fights and more Muay Thai fights, likely because Muay Thai fighters are generally paid less than MMA fighters. Another issue that both companies face is their profitability, as much of the money they have been given to be funded was from investors, and as of now nothing has indicated that these companies have begun to make money.

Personally, I think because ONE has dropped their focus on MMA, that PFL is pretty clearly the number 2 promotion behind the UFC, but things can always change. For the sake of the sport, it is always good to have many companies and alternatives where fighters can get paid, so the UFC does not have complete control over the sport. Hopefully both of these companies can fix their issues and continue forward even better than they are today.


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