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Impa Kasanganay | Photo by Louis Grasse/PxImages/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images Impa Kasanganay, Fabian Edwards, and the rest of the PFL middleweight and lightweight tournaments are locked in for Friday night. On Friday, PFL takes place at Universal Studios Florida in Orlando, featuring the opening round of the middleweight and lightweight tournaments, and while things didn’t go so hot for the first two PFL events in the tournament series, this time it was smooth sailing, with all competitors making weight for their upcoming battles. In the main event, 2023 PFL light heavyweight champion Impa Kasanganay takes on former Bellator title challenger Fabian Edwards, with both men coming in at an identical 185.6 pounds. In the co-main event, 2024 PFL lightweight champion Gadzhi Rabadanov successfully made the 156 pound limit for his bout against former UFC standout Marc Diakiese, who tipped the scales at 155.2 pounds. Also on the card tomorrow, former PFL champion Sadibou Sy returns to action against Dalton Rosta in the middleweight tournament, and former Bellator lightweight champion Brent Primus takes on Vinicius Cenci in the lightweight tournament. Check out the full weigh-in results below and the ceremonial weigh-ins above. Impa Kasanganay (185.6) vs. Fabian Edwards (185.6) Gadzhi Rabadanov (156.0) vs. Marc Diakiese (155.2) Sadibou Sy (185.8) vs. Dalton Rosta (185.4) Mads Burnell (155.8) vs. Jay Jay Wilson (156.0) Clay Collard (155.4) vs. Alfie Davis (155.8) Josh Silveira (185.6) vs. Mike Shipman (186.0) Brent Primus (155.6) vs. Vinicius Cenci (155.8) Aaron Jeffery (185.4) vs. Murad Ramazanov (185.2) Robert Watley (154.6) vs. Tony Caruso (155.6) Khalid Murtazaliev (MW alt): 185.0

Paddy Pimblett and Michael Chandler | Paddy Pimblett, YouTube Paddy Pimblett couldn’t have had a better night at UFC 314. In the biggest fight of his career to date, Pimblett showed out in impressive fashion, dominating Michael Chandler for two rounds before finishing via ground-and-pound knockout in the third. On Wednesday, Pimblett released a behind-the-scenes video blog of his special night in Miami and it turned out to be quite the victory lap backstage. A number of marquee names either congratulated Pimblett in person or delivered testimonials praising him for his performance, including UFC CEO Dana White, who was enthusiastic about Pimblett’s win. “Everybody keeps doubting you,” White said. “Congrats.” Pimblett also made sure to visit Chandler’s locker room and show his gratitude to the veteran for taking the fight. “Mike, thanks for stepping up and sharing the octagon with me,” Pimblett said. “I appreciate it.” UFC stars Dustin Poirier and Israel Adesanya were also shown complimenting Pimblett and even one of Pimblett’s recent in-cage foes, King Green, took to social media to give Pimblett his flowers. “I haven’t seen the fight yet, just looking at the highlights,” Green said in his Instagram Stories. “I’ll be the first to say it if they won’t say it: you’re the real deal, brother.” With the win, Pimblett improved to 7-0 in the UFC and he moved into the top 10 (No. 8) of the promotion’s official rankings for the first time.

Photo By Tyler Miller/Sportsfile via Getty Images Fabian Edwards endured a rollercoaster of emotions over the past few weeks after he received notification that he was being removed from the upcoming PFL middleweight tournament before eventually getting his spot back with a fight booked against Impa Kasanganay on Friday. The whole ordeal came down to a visa issue for the British fighter traveling into the United States, where the fights are being held, but he credits his manager with getting the situation handled. Edwards admits that the situation served as a distraction, but didn’t prevent him from staying ready for his upcoming fight. “I got the call on a Sunday saying that I’m out,” Edwards told MMA Fighting. “It was some visa issue. I had a visa issue. Not so much an issue, just the time that it took for my visa to come back wasn’t going to be back in time. But my manager, Ali [Abdelaziz], went and did his thing and sorted it out. The fact that he had to pull on his contracts to do that, I appreciate that a lot. It’s nice to have someone like that in your corner to sort it out. I’m grateful. “To be honest, it got sorted out kind of quick [over] the span of a couple of days, but throughout the camp, it was in the back of my mind a little bit, but I just tried not to focus on it. I knew that I had to stay locked in. Regardless of whether I was going to fight or not, I had to make sure I was training properly and I done that.” With only so many spots to fill in an eight-person tournament, Edwards is thankful that he was able to reclaim his position, especially knowing he could compete up to three times over the next few months. “I’m happy,” Edwards said. “To be able to have the opportunity to go in there and do that, especially when last week or whatever it was, I thought it was taken away from me. I was happy to be back in. I’ve always said I want a shitload of fights and I get my opportunity to do that.” While Edwards is satisfied with his plans for 2025, the same can’t be said for some of the other fighters on the same PFL roster. Edwards’ former opponent and current Bellator middleweight champion Johnny Eblen is one of a handful of fighters speaking out about long periods of inactivity, with no indication from the PFL when he might compete again. “Still waiting on PFL for some fight news,” Eblen wrote in February, with his most recent fight coming against Edwards back in October 2024. “Haven’t heard a peep from Donn [Davis] or the PFL team. What’s going on, guys?” Still waiting on pfl for some fight news… haven’t heard a peep from Donn or the PFL team. What’s going on guys?— Johnny Eblen (@JohnnyEblen) February 19, 2025 As much as he’s considered Eblen a professional rival, Edwards admits he feels for his former opponent and other champions like Corey Anderson and Patchy Mix, who have also complained about long stretches of inactivity. “It’s shit. You know what I mean?” Edwards said. “There’s no other way to say about it. It’s shit. They need to sort it out because that could very much be me. In my mind, I’m not thinking because I’m fighting, f*ck everyone else. No, this is how we make our earning, this is what we put all our time and effort into. “To see all those guys on the sidelines for a year or over a year, it’s craziness. I just hope they can sort out what they need to sort out.” While the PFL is planning on promoting several “champion” series events in 2025, with the first card expected to take place in early summer, there are only so many slots available, so it’s impossible to know when or if certain athletes will compete. Edwards understands the frustration Eblen and other fighters are facing, especially with so much uncertainty when it comes to the future. “We’re going out there and putting our health on the line,” Edwards said. “I know obviously it’s our choice, but we’re still going out there and putting it on all the line. The fact that fighters get the worst end of the stick, it’s shitty. But this is what we choose.” Despite two past fights against each other, Edwards says he doesn’t harbor any ill will towards Eblen, and if anything, he wants the Bellator middleweight champion to get busy so they could potentially meet again one day. There’s no way to know if that can happen or not, but Edwards wants to do his part by winning the PFL middleweight tournament, and hopefully, Eblen is open to the same idea. “I hope they fight him soon,” Edwards said about Eblen. “I hope they fight all the guys soon. This is how we make our living. This is what we sacrifice everything for. Hopefully, they sort everything out. “But yeah, I get through the tournament, and I will be eyeing up that third fight. I will be looking for that third fight.”

Photo by Michelle Farsi/Zuffa LLC The UFC has famously negotiated some “almost deals” that never quite got done, and it turns out disgraced ex-WWE owner Vince McMahon was at the center of personally sinking one of the biggest. Back in 2011, the UFC was working towards a new broadcast rights deal after outgrowing its previous home at Spike TV and there were more than a few interested parties involved. In the end, UFC CEO Dana White says that it was NBC that came to the table with the best offer, and the two sides were just hammering out a few final details before ultimately signing a contract. “So I’m on the 1-yard line, we’re about to get a deal done with NBC,” White said on Stephanie McMahon’s What’s Your Story podcast. “One of my big deal points was that The Ultimate Fighter had to be on USA [Network]. We’re literally in New York for days hammering it out with all the executives over there. Finally they come back and say ‘we’ll do it, we’ll put The Ultimate Fighter on USA.’ “So the next day we come back, and we’re about to sign the deal and do all this stuff, and they’re like ‘we can’t believe this, we didn’t know this, we just found out — Vince McMahon has the right to determine whether another combat sport can come onto USA.’ I’m like what? How is that even f*cking possible?” At the time, WWE was one of the biggest programs airing on the USA Network with its flagship series Monday Night Raw. McMahon wielded complete control over the promotion , but it turns out he actually had the power to nix any other combat sport from appearing on the same network. That forced White and former UFC owner Lorenzo Fertitta to fly out to the WWE offices to meet with McMahon in hopes of striking a deal so the promotion could ink the deal with NBC. “So me and Lorenzo said we’ll fly out to Connecticut, and we’ll meet with Vince, and we’ll see if we can get this done,” White explained. “We fly out, we go to the offices, we go in with [Vince] and we sit down, we lay it out to him, tell him the story and he’s like ‘yeah, I don’t want you on the network.’ We’re like why? [He said] ‘I just don’t want you on it.’ “So that blew up the whole NBC deal. We were actually going to buy G4. We were buying G4 and all this other crazy [stuff]. So then we pick up the phone and we call Eric Shanks and we fly out to L.A. and we do the FOX deal. The rest is history.” G4 was a network devoted primarily to video games with series such as Attack of the Show where future stars like Olivia Munn got her start. Once McMahon nixed the deal, the UFC obviously didn’t end up buying G4, never ended up working with NBC and instead landed at FOX for the next seven years. If there was a silver lining to that whole situation, White says he believes buying G4 would have been one of the worst ideas in UFC history. “Life is crazy in these ways,” White said. “You don’t know what we would have done or how it would have played out but we believe that if we bought G4, it would have killed us.” Barely three years after the UFC was forced to pass on buying G4, the network ceased operations and went out of business with NBC shutting it down. The UFC’s deal with FOX worked out for both sides before the combat sports giant left in 2018 to then sign a new seven-year deal with ESPN that was worth around $300 million per year. The UFC is now back in negotiations on a new broadcast rights deal with the organization reportedly seeking around $1 billion per year for the new contract. As far as McMahon choosing to tank the deal with NBC, White believes that was just his nature and he decided that the UFC was going to be a rival rather than an ally. “I think that [Vince McMahon] had this thing where he had to create that [rivalry],” White said. “It was his thing Funny enough, McMahon later praised the UFC, and the new owners at Endeavor, when WWE sold to the company led by Ari Emanuel, which merged the two organizations into one powerhouse conglomerate now known as TKO Group Holdings. McMahon eventually resigned from his position in TKO after an explosive lawsuit was filed against him by a former employee alleging sexual abuse and trafficking among other offenses.

Photo by Ben Roberts Photo/Getty Images The boxing match between ex-UFC fighters Darren Till and Darren Stewart has been rescheduled as the main event of the upcoming Misfits Boxing 21 card scheduled for May 16 in Derby, England. The matchup originally slated to serve as the co-main event to a Misfits card headlined by KSI taking on Dillon Danis but that matchup was scrapped after KSI fell ill. There’s still no word if that fight is going to be rebooked, but Till and Stewart are still signed to clash with the fight now taking place on May 16. The fight serves as Till’s third boxing match since leaving the UFC where he was a one-time title challenger at welterweight. In his most recent fight, Till stopped Anthony Taylor in the sixth round to earn his first professional win a a boxer. As for Stewart, he’ll be making his professional boxing debut after an MMA career that dates back to 2014 including 14 total fights in the UFC. In his most recent bout, Stewart suffered a TKO loss to Carlos Pereira at a Cage Warriors event back in 2024. Till vs. Stewart joins a growing lineup for the Misfits Boxing card on May 16 that features several prominent social media influencers with a light heavyweight title fight between Idris Virgo and Ty Mitchell also on the card. The event is set for broadcast on DAZN. Here’s the full card for Misfits Boxing 21 on May 16 MAIN EVENT: Darren Till vs. Darren Stewart Idris Virgo vs. Ty Mitchell Chase DeMoor vs. Tank Tolman Walid Sharks vs. Fox The G Jordan Banjo vs. Wil Anderson Wakey Wines vs. Mo Deen Joey Knight vs. Andrew Howson Heavyweight Survivor Tag feat. Big Tobz, Curtis Pritchard, Godson Umeh and Tempo Arts Amir Anderson and Dylan Price are also both expected to compete on the card, but opponents for both haven’t been revealed.