Following PFL 11 in New York City, you can catch the championship post-fight press conference live right here, with all of the newly crowned championships from the PFL’s 2018 season!
The PFL Championships went down Saturday night at Madison Square Garden’s Hulu Theater in New York City. With the event, the inaugural Professional Fighters League season came to a close. While not without its hiccups, it’s hard to view the upstart promotion’s first season as anything but a success. Plenty of action, plenty of prize money awarded, and on Saturday, a couple of must-see fights.
Those included an early Louis Taylor knockout of Abusupiyan Magomedov. Taylor finished Magomedov in under a minute, kicking off the card in style and claiming the middleweight title in the process.
Also of note, Kayla Harrison was back in action, collecting her third win as a pro. The Olympic gold medalist in judo fell back on that discipline, landing a couple of beautiful throws and completely dominating Moriel Charneski on the ground.
Yet the fight that really stole the show was the light heavyweight final between Sean O’Connell and Vinny Magalhaes. Magalhaes found some success early, despite O’Connell landing on the feet. On the ground, the BJJ ace had O’Connell wrapped up, threatening with a heel hook. Over three minutes of ground time with Vinny in the driver’s seat, and it looked like the fight would go his way. Yet O’Connell battled back, turning things up in the second and shoring up his takedown defense impressively. From that point on, a pattern of Magalhaes getting lit up, shooting, O’Connell sprawling, and forcing the fight back to the feet commenced. This lasted the better part of the next two rounds, until Magalhael’s corner waved it off.
With that, Sean O’Connell won the inaugural PFL light heavyweight title, a million dollars, and retired following the fight. The former UFC athlete had come out of retirement for the opportunity to compete for real money in the PFL — and made the most of it.
The post-fight press conference will start shortly after tonight’s event — stay tuned!
