The PFL will crown their Season 10 champions in six weight classes on Friday night inside Hulu Theater at Madison Square Garden in New York. This finale will give the winning fighters a $1 million cash prize.
Undefeated two-time champion Kayla Harrison, currently ranked No. 8 in ESPN’s pound-for-pound rankings, will go for a third season championship in the main event, facing Larissa Pacheco, who scored first-round knockouts in all three of her 2022 bouts.
Follow along all through the night as ESPN’s Jeff Wagenheim recaps all of the action.
Fight in progress:
Welterweight: Sadibou Sy vs. Dilano Taylor
PFL 10 Finals results
Light heavyweight: Robert Wilkinson def. Omari Akhmedov by second-round TKO
Wilkinson earned a win over Akhmedov via doctor’s stoppage to claim the PFL light heavyweight title, more to come from New York in a bit.
Men’s featherweight: Sheymon Moraes def. Marlon Moraes by third-round TKO
Marlon Moraes was true to form, just more so.
He has a history of starting strongly and then either fading or getting stopped, and that happened in a big way in this fight. After dominating the first two rounds and looking fresh to start of the third, he was dropped by an overhand right and finished by Sheymon Moraes (no relation) at 58 seconds of the final round.
Before the PFL was the PFL — back when the promotion was known as the World Series of Fighting — Marlon Moraes was its bantamweight champion. But that was a long time ago — his reign was from 2014 until 2016. More recently, he has struggled. This was either his PFL debut or his return, depending on how you view the WSOF rebranding, and he came in having lost five of his last six UFC bouts. Add one more defeat.
For Sheymon Moraes, who like Marlon is from Brazil, this gives him four wins in his last five fights.
Men’s lightweight: Natan Schulte def. Jeremy Stephens by second-round submission
How do you say “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again,” in Portuguese?
Schulte, the two-time PFL lightweight champion from Brazil, needed just two or three hard kicks to the calf from Stephens, who throws everything hard, to decide that the best way to fight “Li’l Heathen” was on the canvas. So Schulte took the fight there immediately.
Within the fight’s first minute, Schulte took a dominant position on the mat and locked in a head-and-arm choke, which he held for much of the rest of the round. But Stephens survived that submission attempt and a rear-naked choke near the end of the round.
When Round 2 began, Schulte took the fight right back to the canvas within 10 seconds and quickly secured a head-and-arm choke. This time it was tighter, and Stephens tapped out at 1:32. Schulte, 30, has won two in a row.
Stephens, a 36-year-old from San Diego, California, has just one win in his last eight fights.
Catchweight (175 pounds): Magomed Magomedkerimov def. Gleison Tibau by unanimous decision
The fighters hugged at the center of the cage at the start, which was about as close as they got for three rounds. Tibau’s takedown defense kept Magomedkerimov off of him, but the Brazilian offered little offense in losing all three rounds on all three scorecards.
Magomedkerimov, the 2018 PFL welterweight champion, stalked his opponent for nearly all of the 15 minutes and landed with frequency, but while he marked up Tibau’s face, he never had him in serious trouble.
In addition to being a past champion, Magomedkerimov also made it to last year’s final. But the 32-year-old from Dagestan has seen his PFL run stalled by chronic visa issues. This season he competed only once, scoring a second-round knockout of Dilano Taylor, who went on to make the playoff finals.
Tibau, who is 39 and from Brazil, has lost two in a row.
Women’s flyweight: Dakota Ditcheva vs. Katherine Corogenes by first-round KO
Ditcheva scored her second first-round knockout in the PFL and showed off a more well-rounded arsenal of skills.
She came in looking to strike, while Corogenes closed the distance, hoping to take the fight to the canvas. But Ditcheva, a 24-year-old from England, held her own in clinches while landing knees to the body. And when she had some space, Ditcheva landed a flurry of punches, punctuated by a right hand that gave her the knockout at 4:20.
“I woke up this morning,” Ditcheva said, “and I choose violence every single day.”
Corogenes, who has the typical MMA background of Ivy League Ph.D., is a 33-year-old from Philadelphia. She falls to 3-1.
Men’s lightweight (amateur): Biaggio Ali Walsh def. Tom Graesser by first-round KO
Ali Walsh, the grandson of “The Greatest,” Muhammad Ali, kicked off the evening in a pretty great way, blasting Graesser with straight punch after straight punch, bloodying him and then dropping him for the finish just 45 seconds in.
Ali Walsh was busy from the get-go, throwing 25 punches and kicks in the short fight and landing 20. He looked sharp for an amateur who is now 2-1.
Along with his overmatched opponent, Ali Walsh had to deal with the pressure of being the grandson of a legend. “The pressure, it’s going to be there,” he said. “But I talk to myself a lot, I meditate, I visualize. There’s certain things I do to deal with that pressure. It’s always going to be there, and I think I handled it pretty well.”