Taking a shot at Dana White and UFC, which he and the Fertitta brothers grew from virtually nothing, takes a lot of courage. Along with that, if you take your shot and miss, you learn it the hard way just like how the PFL CEO is finding out now. PFL Co-founder Donn Davis had issued a challenge that he would spend more money on PFL in October than what White had done for UFC Noche at The Sphere in Las Vegas back in September.

Alas! That challenge came at a huge setback because it looks like the PFL might be going bankrupt. On top of that, Brazilian MMA star Patricio Pitbull wants to leave the PFL! When the news was delivered to Dana White at the UFC 310 post-fight presser, he had a lot to say.

Dana White addressed the case of PFL and Patricio Pitbull’s request to the former promotion

Just like how the UFC acquired Strikeforce in 2011, the PFL purchased Bellator in November this year, and with that, they also acquired the fighters under the same promotion. One of those fighters, Bellator two-weight champion Patricio Pitbull has been incessantly asking PFL to give him a fight but his wish has not yet been granted by Donn Davis. Out of desperation, Pitbull took to his X (formerly Twitter) account and requested the promotion to grant his release respectfully. Pitbull received no response from the PFL co-founder, and this issue was raised to Dana White at the UFC 310 presser, who didn’t waste time berating its current biggest competitor in the US.

Dana White went on a rampage and said, “Listen, the last couple of months we’ve been talking a lot about the PFL, you know? They’re canceling a lot of shows, I know that a lot of guys that are supposed to fight aren’t fighting and I mean, you guys know what the f**k is going on. When you see that start to happen, you’re running out of money. Things aren’t looking good and you’re going to have people that want to jump ship.” He also mentioned how the fighters have a very short window of time in their career to find success because combat sports favor the young over the old.

Michael ‘Venom’ Page successfully switched from Bellator to UFC and showcased his amazing strikes in the promotion. So, there might be some hope for Pitbull. Despite having 36 wins in his bag, Pitbull had to spend a lot of time without any matchup under PFL. On top of that, his anger was aggravated when Leandro Higo expressed his disappointment in X about his canceled fights. Pitbull resonated with his fellow Brazilian contender and posted on X as well.

Patricio Pitbull speaks out on PFL canceling fights

Although he had fought Jeremy Kennedy at the Bellator Champions Series back in March 2024, Pitbull posted the following on X, “I haven’t fought since February. I wanted to fight 3x this year, but I was told I’d have to wait until December 31st and found out online my opponent would fight someone else. Then they had a replacement, I bring people over, spend more money with the camp and there’s no fight.” 

The former Bellator 2 weight champ explained his concerns for the future of PFL and Bellator FC. He was empathetic towards the fighters who were not getting fights or their bouts being canceled. Pitbull continued in his series of X posts, “This is wrong. We need answers, we need the fighters and fans to be respected. This is not a game or just some business, these are people’s lives we are talking about. A serious promotion would give fighters the chance to fight at least 3 times a year if they’re healthy.” 

Very soon Patchy Mix too, joined the series of complaints and expressed his stance on his canceled bout against Higo. He said how he was training rigorously for the last half year, expressing his frustration, especially during the prime of his career. In fact, the UFC head honcho had predicted this when Donn Davis announced that he would spend more on PFL: Battle of Giants than White had done for Noche UFC.

White had criticized PFL’s move of spending more than UFC in the Battle of Giants. UFC Noche had cost $20 million and PFL spent more than that despite garnering abysmal PPV buys. White said in the UFC 307 post-fight press conference, “That sounds f***ing brilliant. How many tickets are you going to sell? Yeah, they’re not very bright. Yeah. So if I were them, listen, it’s all fair. Knock yourself out. They’re drowning.” The UFC head honcho simply claimed that the PFL officials weren’t good at what they did.

The ticket sales were not up to the mark with sales amounting to $10,000 in PPV buys. Davis had expected that since it was a fight between Francis Ngannou and Renan Ferreira, it would attract an audience but it did not, to the extent that he predicted. The organization made only $500K in an event where they had to pay more than $10 million to fighters. So they had a shortage of money later on which might be the reason they are cancelling fights because they cannot pay the fighters enough. What do you think about the state of PFL? Can Pitbull switch to UFC?  Let us know what you think in the comments down below.