Dana White named his favorite fight in UFC history\u2026 \u2018The roof nearly came off that building\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n![\"Dana](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/GettyImages-1273201516-1024x679.jpg\")
Photo by Jeff Bottari\/Zuffa LLCPavol Neruda says Oktagon is the number two promotion in MMA<\/p>\n
Since Oktagon\u2019s inception, the promotion has gone above and beyond to give the fans epic nights<\/p>\n
Last year, they broke the attendance record for the sport, with 59,148 spectators packing into the Deutsche Bank Park in Frankfurt, Germany.<\/p>\n
And now, Pavol Neruda believes the promotion is only second to the UFC.<\/p>\n
In an exclusive interview with Bloody Elbow, he exclaimed: \u201cI would say we\u2019re the number two, if you count ticket sales, the engagement on social media, and the world attendance record for an MMA event that we broke, and the roster we have, if you combine these metrics, I believe it\u2019s number two.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome people say number three because PFL has a strong roster, it\u2019s fine, it depends on how you look at it. I believe we are selling big arenas, and that\u2019s more because it shows the interest of fans.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m very happy, we\u2019re talking with Netflix about projects and other big brands. I think that\u2019s really cool. It still feels like it\u2019s the beginning.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we broke the record in Frankfurt, we thought about how we can move forward and spread the sport so that more people will be passionate. That\u2019s our mission.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pavol Neruda shares the wildest moment of his career when fans nearly rioted<\/p>\n
In his time in the MMA business, Neruda has had many crazy experiences.<\/p>\n
However, the entrepreneur has one memory that stands out from the pack.<\/p>\n
He revealed: \u201cThe first tournament in Frankfurt, at the Festhalle, a 9000-people venue, it was our first time in Germany and the first MMA event in Frankfurt \u2014 before that it was prohibited. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt was such a crazy crowd. Christian Eckerlin\u2019s fans were around the cage; they bought 300 VIP tickets. They were big and tough guys and we had no relationship with those people back then.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was this critical moment when Christian Eckerlin was hit with an illegal kick, and the referee was checking the camera to see whether it was an illegal kick or not. If not, he would have lost; if yes, the fight continues.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt took two minutes to consider and the whole venue was on their feet. The tension was over the roof.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf he\u2019d have lost, they would\u2019ve been like, \u2018We\u2019ll show you guys how we\u2019ll handle you\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis was crazy. I was so happy when this fight was over. Luckily, Eckerlin won, the whole venue was celebrating. We were heroes too because we\u2019d delivered a nice event.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut it was so close to being a very different start in Germany.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pavol Neruda believes Oktagon MMA is the number two promotion in the sport. On Saturday night, the European…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":61149,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,958,786,785,44929,49406,85,787],"class_list":["post-61148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-dana-white","tag-fighting","tag-mma","tag-oktagon-74","tag-pavol-neruda","tag-sports","tag-ufc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61148\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}