Since arriving in the PFL in 2019, England’s Brendan Loughnane has slowly and steadily worked his way towards becoming one of the promotion’s biggest stars.
After a much-talked about snub on the Contender Series, where he was denied a contract despite a dominant win, Loughnane (21-3) has extended his win streak to seven — and with a spot in the featherweight semifinals this Friday at PFL Playoffs 3, he’s within striking distance of the championship, and the million dollars in prize money.
“It would have taken me a long time to make a million dollars anywhere else,” Loughnane told Cageside Press in an exclusive interview ahead of his fight with Movlid Khaybulaev. And while he’s grateful for the opportunity to earn that kind of money, what he’s more grateful for is that seven fight win streak, and to be in the position he’s in.
“I was the opening fight on the main card for the last one, and now I’m the main event. So it just shows that I’m being appreciated for where I am,” continued Loughnane, “and that means a lot.”
It’s actually the title, rather than the money, that matters most to Loughnae. “It’s more the belt for me. As weird as that sounds. Money will always come and go, but I’ve worked so hard to get towards the belt, and now I’m so close. That means more to me than the money for sure.”
Fellow PFL fighter Ray Cooper III recently told Cageside Press that he wants to put together a string of championship wins. When that scenario was suggested to Loughnane, the featherweight said he had a similar idea.
“100%. My goal was to fight the five best guys leading up to the final,” Loughnane stated. “With the two fights in one night being cancelled this year, that turned out to be four fights.”
With the coronavirus pandemic forcing the league to scale things back, Loughnane admitted that he was “a bit disappointed. I was looking forward to the challenge of two fights in one night, but the four guys, so far, I’ve fought Sheymon [Moraes], who’s a world-class striker, then I fought Tyler [Diamond] who’s a D-1 wrestler, now I’ve got Khaybulaev who can mix up both, so I’m getting the best guys along the way.” Chris Wade and Bubba Jenkins, on the opposite side of the tournament bracket, “are also great opponents,” he added.
Loughnane’s recent run has turned heads, but the fighter believes he’s always been this good. “I’ve just never had the right opportunities. I’ve lost three fights in my whole career, two of them were very questionable decisions.” Still, despite starting out young and inexperienced, he stuck with the sport, “took my knocks,” and has arrived as one of the faces of the PFL.
Of course, questionable decisions have plagued MMA for years. That’s been as true as ever this year in the PFL, where Rory MacDonald was on the wrong side of a very iffy decision against Gleison Tibau.
Like many other fighters, Loughnane believes judges should be comprised of former fighters, with actual, in-cage experience. “How can you get someone who doesn’t watch MMA, doesn’t care about MMA, judging MMA fights? It’s stupid. It needs to be ex-UFC fighters, ex-high level MMA fighters, it has to be,” exclaimed Loughnane. “How else are they going to know what they’re watching?”
Judging has been all over the place for a long time, in Loughnane’s opinion. “I’ll give you an example, I was about to fight Sheymon [Moraes], and I literally watched Chris Wade get a decision where he didn’t even win one round in the fight. So I had to go out and I knew I had to stop Sheymon, because I thought ‘wow, this judging is all over the place, you might as well roll the dice.’ That’s literally how bad it got in New Jersey.”
The fight against Khabulaev won’t be in New Jersey, but Florida, not that it’s likely to change much on the judging side of things. But Brendan Loughnane knows that if he shows up “the way I know I can,” he can prove to all watching that he’s one of the best 145lb’ers in the world. “That’s a fact, I’ve proved it,” stated Loughnane. “Thank god they’ve put this great opponent in front of me with a 17-0 record, so I can just show everyone how good I am.”
PFL Playoffs 3 goes down this Friday, August 27 at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Hollywood, Florida. Brendan Loughnane faces Movlid Khaybulaev in the main event, one of two featherweight semifinal fights on the card.
