Following an awesome PFC14, the Professional Fighting Championship’s brains trust are already looking forward to building from their show at GrandWest.
On 26 October, fight fans were treated to some of Africa’s best and most promising combat athletes at the Sun Exhibits arena.
PFC14 – the first official event on the big stage for the promotion as it aims to grow into one of Africa’s biggest – showed up and showed out with 18 professional and amateur fights that included kickboxing, boxing and mixed martial arts.
More than three-quarters of the Sun Exhibits arena was buzzing as fans, fighters and family came together to celebrate the return of combat sports to GrandWest – a much needed platform of this magnitude considering the amount of athletes and the imperative need to nurture combat sports in the Western Cape and beyond.
Four title fights were on display on the night as Lewis Mataya and Lyle Adriaans came out victorious in their MMA lightweight and bantamweight fights, respectively.
Lyle, though, was denied the belt due to missing weight.
In the kickboxing bantamweight division, Ashley Hardenberg earned his Amateur Saka (South African Kickboxing Association) title after beating John Engelbreght by unanimous decision before Emile Brits overcame Gregory Gans by split decision for the World Association of Kickboxing (WAKO) Southern African super welterweight title.
Aside from the title fights, there were more tantalising bouts on display including the likes of the infamous Nico Yamdjie versus Danie van Heerden and one of the most-talked-about women’s fights – Jessica Mouneimne versus Audrey Bekker.
“We were really happy with the turnout,” says the PFC team.
“The ticket sales show that there is a big interest in Cape Town and we as the Professional Fighting Championship are happy to continue building and providing these events for the industry.
“We are very grateful to our sponsors as without them we would not be able to do this. They have played an integral role in PFC. We would also like to thank all the fighters and fans for participating. Credit must be given to an athlete such as Wes Mackintosh who took a fight on short notice and performed well. We enjoyed all the fights, and there were some good results on the night.
“Like any event, things don’t always go according to plan, but the positive with this is that we are now able to look at where we can improve and change things to take things to the next level. This has been a great learning curve for us and we are so excited for things going forward.”
Africa’s current biggest MMA promotion, the Extreme Fighting Championship left a gaping hole in the Cape Town and Durban market after it withdrew its legs from those cities due to financial difficulties, which has made the PFC’s leap into the big leagues even more sweeter.
“Some of the PFC goals are to help underprivileged fighters to train and to be able to compete and grow. We would like to make a positive impact on athletes with potential. There are many talented fighters out there without the proper foundation or backing and so we – along with our current sponsors and those interested – would like to change these athletes’ lives by taking them into the professional divisions with our PFC events. Another goal we are looking at is to empower women and children and get them more involved in the sport,” says the PFC team.
“Our next event will be PFC15, this will be held on 29th Feb 2020 at GrandWest at the same venue. We already have some exciting title fights lined up for this one.
“We also have dates for July and November confirmed for GrandWest which we will release more information on, soon.
“ If anyone is interested in getting involved with PFC please pop us an email at [email protected]”
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