{"id":883237,"date":"2026-09-04T16:16:14","date_gmt":"2026-09-04T16:16:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/883237\/"},"modified":"2026-09-04T16:16:14","modified_gmt":"2026-09-04T16:16:14","slug":"mvp-already-receiving-unbelievable-amount-of-interest-from-fighters-in-merged-pfl-mma-entity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/883237\/","title":{"rendered":"MVP already receiving \u2018unbelievable amount\u2019 of interest from fighters in merged PFL MMA entity"},"content":{"rendered":"

Most Valuable Promotions says it\u2019s already seeing significant interest from mixed martial artists who want to sign with the property that it is creating with the PFL<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In July, the two companies announced they would merge to create a new combat sports \u201cpowerhouse\u201d that would span different forms of fighting similar to TKO Group Holdings. MVP has already established itself in boxing with Jake Paul and its investment in the women\u2019s side of the sport, while PFL has been striving to become a competitor to UFC.<\/p>\n

Now, they\u2019re going to band together and become part of the increased competition that UFC could face in the coming years. So far, MVP co-founder Nakisa Bidarian said the reaction from the announcement has been big in terms of fighters reaching out to say they\u2019re interested in joining the reformatted property.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have an unbelievable amount of inbound interest of athletes that want to work with us, and we also have fighters who are signed to other promoters and we don\u2019t even respond to. To be honest, there\u2019s not a conversation to be had until people are free agents,\u201d Bidarian told SBJ in a phone interview from England. \u201cBut the amount of DMs, emails, phone calls that (PFL CEO) John Martin is getting, our matchmakers are getting, myself, Jake, is nonstop on a daily basis.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bidarian said MVP has not engaged with any UFC fighters when asked about athletes from that roster, given the rules against such communication. However, he said: \u201cNot that we\u2019ve communicated with [them], but there\u2019s lots of inbound [interest] from athletes across all spectrums.\u201d<\/p>\n

Looking back on the announcement, Bidarian said he was pleased by the amount of press coverage it generated, and MVP\u2019s business partners are \u201cthrilled and engaged more so than ever.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd that means more opportunities across the board from a business perspective,\u201d Bidarian added.<\/p>\n

Last weekend, MVP celebrated the five-year anniversary of its founding in late August 2021, when it launched with the Jake Paul-Tyron Woodley fight. With the combined MVP\/PFL entity, MVP says it now has 400 athletes signed to its roster. Bidarian said the merger with PFL will give MVP global infrastructure that PFL has spent hundreds of millions of dollars building out.<\/p>\n

\u201cOf course from an athlete standpoint, you think about having more eyes on your performances, more eyes on your career, only means expanded opportunities, so athletes are excited as well,\u201d Bidarian said.<\/p>\n

In the press release revealing the deal, the sides said the new entity would operate under the MVP name. Asked if that meant the PFL name would be folded entirely — and what the new name of the MMA league would be — Bidarian said: \u201cWe\u2019re working through what the brand architecture is. Obviously, the master brand is MVP. And it may be driven by discipline, distributor, product — we\u2019re just figuring out how we want to roll out the brand architecture. But obviously, MVP will be the reference brand for everything that we do.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the PFL brand may exist in some formation for certain products,\u201d he added, \u201cbut in terms of the main MMA product, it will be MVP driven.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Most Valuable Promotions says it\u2019s already seeing significant interest from mixed martial artists who want to sign with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":883238,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[49,48,1263,641,638,82],"class_list":["post-883237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-combat-sports","tag-fighting","tag-mma","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/883237","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=883237"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/883237\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/883238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=883237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=883237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=883237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}