When 2017 comes to a close, so will the World Series Of Fighting. The promotion will be morphing into the Professional Fighters League in 2018. This new company will be run by Donn Davis, Russ Ramsey and Mark Leschly, who are the current owners of the WSOF.
Rey Sefo and Carlos Silva will also have new roles in the promotion, as Sefo will be the President Of Fighter Operations and Silva will serve in the event production & business operation side of things.
This new promotion will be like the International Fight League of days gone by, but instead of a team format, it will just be individual fighters competing for themselves.
The season will last a total of ten months with seven different weight classes being represented. Each competitor will fight a total of three times during the regular season, with the competitors holding the best overall records will meet in the playoffs and then the championships.
There is no word yet on how or if ties will be broken, but much more information will be released by the promotion down the line.
Whomever walks away victorious at the end of each season will win $1 Million, while $3 Million will be spread out through the rest of the field.
A situation that could truly affect the league in a negative way is that the WSOF’s TV deal with the NBC Sports Network expires at 2017, but they are negotiating a new deal right now.
As far as the WSOF goes, the promotion will still be running four more events in 2017, with their final event before the morphing taking place on November 4.
Another unknown is which fighters or title holders will cross over to the new promotion, the current champions in the WSOF are Blagoy Ivanov (HW), Jon Fitch (WW), Andre Harrison (FW) and Bekbulat Magomedov (BW). Justin Gaethje, who is the lightweight champion, is also a free agent and his status with the promotion is up in the air at this time.
Although there is no debut date set yet for the promotion, it is expected to happen in January or February of 2018.
Fightful will be providing more details of this exciting situation as they become available.
