{"id":781508,"date":"2026-07-24T09:09:13","date_gmt":"2026-07-24T09:09:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/781508\/"},"modified":"2026-07-24T09:09:13","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T09:09:13","slug":"pfl-washington-d-c-loses-one-half-of-main-event-replacement-stepping-into-title-fight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/781508\/","title":{"rendered":"PFL Washington D.C. loses one half of main event, replacement stepping into title fight"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">The PFL Washington D.C. card on Saturday has taken a major hit.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">Shamil Musaev has been forced off the card at the last minute after he was scheduled to face Thad Jean in a welterweight title fight in the main event.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">PFL officials confirmed the news to MMA Fighting on Thursday following an initial report from <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/mma_kings\/status\/2080402224178463009\" rel=\"nofollow\">MMAJunkie.<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">PFL CEO John Martin announced that Musaev was having weight cutting issues and now he\u2019s off the card with 11-1 welterweight prospect Ernesto Rodriguez stepping into the main event after he was originally scheduled to compete on Saturday\u2019s undercard.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">Rodriguez faces Jean with the welterweight title going up for grabs.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">The fight serves as Jean\u2019s latest opportunity to continue his undefeated run in the PFL after he put on an incredibly impressive performance winning the 2025 welterweight tournament. The 11-0 fighter seeks to add the PFL welterweight title to his resume with a win on Saturday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">Of course it\u2019s tough news for the PFL but not the first title bout to fall apart during fight week. In the UFC, Islam Makhachev was scheduled to defend his lightweight title back in 2025 but an injury to Arman Tsarukyan forced a last second change to Renato Moicano. Makhachev\u2019s coach and friend Khabib Nurmagomedov also dealt with a similar last second change when he was supposed to fight Tony Ferguson and ended taking on Al Iaquinta on short notice instead.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">The PFL Washington D.C. main card kicks off on Saturday night at 10 p.m. ET with Jean vs. Rodriguez now headlining the event.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The PFL Washington D.C. card on Saturday has taken a major hit. Shamil Musaev has been forced off&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":781509,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[829,19847,19851,99],"class_list":["post-781508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-latest-news","tag-pfl","tag-pfl-news","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/781508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=781508"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/781508\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/781509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=781508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=781508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=781508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}