Linton Vassell had gone back into training camp, helping a teammate prepare for his own fight when he got the call to replace Valentin Moldavsky against Oleg Popov in the 2024 PFL playoffs.
41-year old Vassell (24-9, 1NC) had actually defeated Moldavsky in his second fight of the season, but the split decision gifted him just three points, not enough to make the post-season.
“I went back after like four, five days off to rest and they said ‘you’re going to be in the tournament,'” Vassell recalled in a recent interview with Cageside Press. The promotion asked him if he’d been training, saying there was an “80% chance” he’d be back in the season.
“The next day they gave me the call and said ‘you’re in, Valentin’s out.’ I was like ‘oh my! Dang.’ You couldn’t write it. This story, you couldn’t write it.”
While he’ll now compete at PFL Nashville on August 2, many expected Vassell, a longtime Bellator MMA heavyweight, to be the next man to challenge for that promotion’s title. Instead, he entered the PFL tournament, losing his first fight to Denis Goltsov before winning the rubber match in his trilogy with Moldavsky.
“You know what I’m more proud of, that I shut a few people up,” Vassell added. “The Swarm” believes he was called out by Moldavsky specifically because of his performance in the fight with Goltsov. “I think he called me out because of my performance, the first [fight of the] season, obviously when I fought Denis. I think he saw he saw this fight in the first round, ‘if I’ve got to call anybody out, it’s probably that guy.’ Probably thought my age was going to be a factor, but I made sure it wasn’t. Went back to the gym after that fight, and just killed that cardio. Made that a top priority.”
In terms of the roller coaster ride that has been his career in recent years, Linton Vassell agreed that it fees like everything has worked out the way it was meant to.
“Life isn’t a straight journey. It’s lefts, rights, downs. Take some u-turns, and a circle. Never straight. I got to the title, got back to it… …I think these journeys and these circumstances have just got that fire burning,” stated Vassell. “More determined, more sacrifice, got more energy. And again, we are here where we are now, we are here where we are now and [I’ve] just got to go in there and prove that it’s time.”
“Be smart, and it will come,” he added.
Watch our full interview with PFL Nashville’s Linton Vassell above, along with his media day appearance.
