Hollywood, FL — Jonathan Coachman (you might know him from his days on WWE television as just “Coach”) has been with the PFL for years now, taking over the post-fight media duties from Ray Sefo and other execs during the PFL World Tournament.
Which had Coach fielding questions following PFL Hollywood on Thursday, which closed out the tournament with the heavyweight, light heavyweight, and middleweight divisions wrapping. With eight World Tournament champs crowned, Coachman now says the focus will be on finding eight world champions for them to face.
“We have to find eight world champions, first and foremost. So we have four more here months in 2025, and then a lot of the executives are going to sit down and figure out- because once we have the eight champions, we have eight number one contenders,” Coachman said following Thursday’s event in Hollywood, Florida, speaking with media outlets including Cageside Press. “Then we’ve got to figure out, because a lot of the fighters want to fight three, four times a year, nobody wants to sit around and just want to fight once or twice, so we’ve got to figure out how we do that. Do we save somebody for the world tournament. If they say ‘I want to fight,’ if any of our champions or tournament champions want to fight again in the World Tournament, what does that look like? I have no idea.”
Well, maybe some idea. Costello van Steenis defeated Johnny Eblen to claim the old Bellator middleweight title, which is now part of the PFL Champions Series. The PFL Global Season last year saw Dakota Ditcheva claim gold, which she would theoretically retain, though no belt was on the line when she faced Sumiko Inaba recently. Francis Ngannou defeated Renan Ferreira for the PFL SuperFights heavyweight title last year, though given his lack of activity, who is actually the champ at heavyweight will be a question (Oleg Popov won the World Tournament at heavyweight on Thursday).
Coachman also addressed who the breakout star of the PFL World Tournament was; in fact, he gave three names.
“Who is our MVP? That’s a good question. I think probably the biggest surprise was probably Fabian Edwards, because he’d kind of been average that past couple of years,” stated Coachman, noting that Edwards had come into the tournament looking to prove he was as good as he claimed. “He did that three different times.”
“I think if you’re looking at it from a company perspective, Thad Jean, not only did he perform great, he wasn’t even supposed to be in the tournament, he shows up whenever we ask him to show up.” Jean was on hand at PFL Hollywood, even though he wasn’t actually fighting and had defeated Logan Storley earlier in the month to win the tournament at welterweight. “It’s not hard to be nice, it’s not hard to be a star. You just got to go out and you’ve got to do it. A lot of fighters and a lot of athletes don’t understand that. Thad Jean does.”
“I would love to see Liz Carmouche against Dakota Ditcheva. She at 41 years of age is turning back the clock. So we’ve got to give her a lot of credit as well. I think those are the three that stand out to me the most,” finished Coachman.
Watch the full PFL post-fight press conference with Jonathan Coachman above.
