For the third straight playoff semifinal card, the PFL faces the potential for a bizarre conclusion to its season after one of its competitors for Wednesday’s fight card in New York missed weight on Tuesday. That creates a circumstance in which a fighter can lose a semifinal but nonetheless advance to the final.
Carlos Leal weighed in at 172 pounds — one pound over the welterweight limit — for his semifinal against 2022 season champion Sadibou Sy. The fight will go on, with the second-seeded Leal forfeiting 20% of his purse to No. 3 seed Sy. In addition, Leal will have one point deducted from his score for the league’s purposes. The penalty will not affect the official scorecards, just the PFL’s playoff scenario.
Should the bout go the distance and the judges score the bout 29-28 in favor of Leal, the PFL would treat it as a draw and Sy would advance, despite losing on the official scorecards, because the first tiebreaker in that circumstance is making weight. Sy weighed in Tuesday at 170.8 pounds, and also making weight were the other welterweight semifinalists, Magomed Magomedkerimov (170) and Solomon Renfro (170.4).
All four lightweight semifinalists weighed in under the 156-pound limit: Clay Collard (155), Shane Burgos (156), Olivier Aubin-Mercier (155.6) and Bruno Miranda (154).
The Leal situation is reminiscent of what happened prior to the past two semifinal cards, when women’s featherweight Olena Kolesnyk and men’s featherweight Jesus Pinedo missed weight. In both cases, however, the scorecards did not come into play, as Pinedo advanced to the final by knockout and Kolesnyk lost by knockout.
Wednesday’s main card at The Theater at Madison Square Garden is on ESPN and ESPN+ at 9 p.m. ET, preceded by prelims on ESPN+ at 6:30 p.m.