Flyweight Jena Bishop is entering the PFL 2024 post-season this weekend, and despite being two fights into her season, still struggles with how the league’s tournament format works.
A lack of transparency seems to be the root of the issue; Bishop, along with teammate Angela “Overkill” Hill, was a vocal critic of the PFL’s matchmaking earlier this year. That little firestorm erupted over apparent favorable matchmaking received by promotional darling Dakota Ditcheva, but that’s not Bishop’s only concerns with the PFL season.
Speaking with Cageside Press ahead of her fight with Ditcheva at PFL Nashville, Bishop admitted that “I still don’t know why or what the reasoning behind any of the matchmaking is. So that would be a great start, is just to explain what is going on. To me, it seems like we have our favorites, we have our people.”
With more eyes on the PFL tournament this year due to their acquisition of Bellator, Bishop believes more people are talking about the format than ever before. Making the need for clarity the first issue. “Nobody understands their match-ups and their things, the way that it goes. The first thing is just to be like, ‘can we have an explanation?’ And also, if you want to say it’s a season and it’s a tournament, then you should kind of have the match-ups set for the fist two fights of the season. Maybe start off by announcing the whole season schedule or something.”
Bishop also questioned whether the PFL’s season format was having the desired effect. For years, the PFL’s execs have touted the season as a way to connect with fans, who are used to the “win and move on” nature of other professional sports. MMA, though using the tournament structure initially, quickly shifted to more of a boxing model, with promoter’s pushing the biggest names, and rankings mattering little.
The PFL bucked that trend, relying primarily on tournaments, with a points format based on finishes.
“I’m not a huge fan of the whole season and tournament thing in general, because to me, it’s more confusing than it is helping to elevate the sport,” said Bishop. “Because I think even people that are super into MMA are like, ‘what’s going on?’ And I’m not saying that trying to criticize the whole thing, it’s just like, I don’t know that it’s adding anything to the sport of MMA to make it more palatable for the general public or the non-fan. But that’s just my opinion.”
The never-ending nature of the PFL tournaments also makes them feel a little less special, Bishop agreed. “For sure. When Bellator does their tournaments, it’s kind of cool, and they have it seeded. You start out, the same way that most tournaments are ran, that’s how Bellator would do that. So it’s like, you’re going to know, you can look ahead like ‘ooh they might fight this person.’ The points and the season and the playoffs gets a little bit convoluted, a little bit confusing I think, but the tournament style is kind of fun to watch, and you kind of see it play out throughout the year, it’s not like a really short burst.”
Then there’s the status of champions in the PFL. For Jena Bishop, what being a PFL champion actually means is itself unclear.
“It’s a little bit weird. You win the title, you win the championship then immediately you’re not the champion anymore, you have to go back into- there’s no defenses of the title. What does it even mean to be a champion there? Because that goes away next year, then you have to fight, you’re not defending your title, you’re just fighting in a regular season again. It’s kind of weird.”
With all that said, Bishop also admits that she appreciates the busy schedule. Not that it’s easy.
“It’s not the physical nature of it, that’s not that bad, I enjoy that stress and that strain. But it’s the mental,” she said of having seemingly never-ending fight camps. “I love training and training is so much fun, but when you’re training and you have to be on and you have to be winning and doing all the right things, then that makes it a little bit stressful. So I would like a little downtime from that, but I’m also like, it is what it is, let’s keep going because I’m happy to be fighting.”
Watch our full interview with PFL Nashville star Jena Bishop above.
