Fight Facts: PFL 8 2019 Playoffs 2
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TOTAL NUMBER OF PFL FIGHTS: 567
TOTAL NUMBER OF PFL EVENTS: 57
The Professional Fighters League on Thursday moved forward with the featherweight and lightweight playoffs, which yielded some surprising results at the Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas. PFL 8 featured a record number of fighters getting put to sleep, a competitor who qualified for a final without winning a single match in the regular season and the first ninja choke in company history.
THE PIT AND THE PEN-NIJEM: Two fighters competed at this event despite never appearing in the regular season: featherweight Daniel Pineda and lightweight Ramsey Nijem, with wildly different results. Pineda advanced to the final with two first-round stoppages, while Nijem was finished in the first round of his quarterfinal.
YOUR REFEREE IS MR. SANDMAN: Coming into this event, 12 fighters had been stopped by technical submission -- all due to choke -- throughout company history. Three fighters went to sleep via various chokes at PFL 8, the most in any one night under the World Series of Fighting-PFL flag. No previous show had ever featured more than two technical submissions, which happened once at WSOF 6 in 2013. Of note, the recent UFC on ESPN 5 event in August featured three technical submissions.
THEIR CHINS HELD UP, THE JUDGES DID NOT: Chris Wade, Nate Andrews, Rashid Magomedov and Alex Gilpin all dropped decisions that resulted in their elimination. Decision defeats account for all of their respective career losses -- 17 in total.
KEEP IT UNANIMOUS: Loik Radzhabov captured a unanimous decision over Wade in the final fight of the event, earning the 200th unanimous verdict in WSOF-PFL history.
WADING INTO UNCOMFORTABLE TERRITORY: Wade and Alexandre Almeida lost on the scorecards at PFL 8, moving them into a third-place tie for the most losses (four) in promotional history with a slew of other fighters.
NATAN SNORES: Two of the three technical submissions came from Natan Schulte, as the 2018 lightweight winner advanced to the final after putting Nijem and Akhmed Aliev to sleep with chokes. He became the first fighter in major MMA organizational history to pull off multiple technical submissions in a single night.
WE’RE NUMBER ONE: By recording two wins at the event, top seeds Schulte and Lance Palmer advanced to their respective final. This is a sharp contrast to the first playoffs event this year, where neither number top-seeded fighter advanced.
PALMER POWER: After picking up two wins at this event, Palmer extended his records for the most appearances (17) and the most wins (14) in WSOF-PFL history.
KILLER IS DEAD: Movlid Khaybulaev suffered the first loss of his career after getting finished by a leg kick and follow-up punches from Pineda. Previously, “Killer” was 14-0-1, with half of his wins coming inside the distance.
UNDER THE HALF-MINUTE MARK: Pineda’s finish of Khaybulaev came in 29 seconds, ranking as the eighth-fastest knockout in promotional history.
SPEED IN, SPEED OUT: Khaybulaev also holds the record for the quickest knockout in PFL history, with a 10-second drubbing of Damon Jackson. As a result, he becomes the only fighter to be on the winning and losing ends of Top 10 fastest knockouts.
HE RAN ON HIS NECK LIKE A NINJA: Gilpin hit Andre Harrison with a ninja choke -- a modified guillotine or front choke -- and put him to sleep in Round 2. Gilpin’s submission was the first of its kind in company history.
YOU KNEW WHAT YOU WERE GETTING INTO: Gadzhi Rabadanov edged his way into the tournament in the last slot at featherweight but missed weight before facing Palmer and was pulled from the bout. This was the second time Rabadanov has missed weight this season, previously doing so before attempting to meet Pineda in July.
NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN: Coming into PFL 8, Harrison had never been finished (23 fights), Aliev (25 fights) and Kennedy (17 fights) had never been submitted and Magomedov (28 fights) and Luis Rafael Laurentino (36 fights) had never lost consecutive bouts.
Sherdog contributing editor Jay Pettry is an attorney and a statistician. Writing about MMA since he started studying the “Eminem Curse” in 2012 and working for Vice Sports and Combat Docket along the way, he put together many fight result and entrance music databases to better study the sport. You can find him on twitter at @jaypettry.
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