Is Global Fight League already done?
Last week, GFL finally announced that they were coming to Los Angeles to host two events on May 24 and May 25. It was a stacked card that had plenty of former UFC champions on their roster; Anthony Pettis (UFC Lightweight Champion), Holly Holm (UFC Women’s Bantamweight Champion), Benson Henderson (UFC Lightweight Champion), and Tony Ferguson (UFC Interim Lightweight Champion).
However, Global Fight League has abruptly cancelled their first two shows.
The California State Athletic Commission executive director Andy Foster confirmed that both events in Los Angeles have been scrapped. MMA Fighting dug even further and talked to several fighters on the card and they’ve also confirmed that the shows have been cancelled.
As of now, there’s no confirmation on when the league will make their official debut. Originally, GFL was supposed to have their first event in April. Then it was changed to May. Now, the future of Global Fight League is in doubt.
One of the plenty of red herrings about GFL was the lucrative contracts that they were handing out to former UFC stars. The names above only scratch the surface in terms of the scheduled talent for the GFL card. GFL founder Darren Owen spoke out about the reasoning behind these cancellations and not surprisingly, it’s due to financial issues (Transcript courtesy of Yahoo! Sports):
"Working on a solution. My main investor didn’t fulfill his April obligation which has caused a problem. I’ll keep you posted but I believe we will be able work through it. I think we can make it happen for June.
"Additionally I don’t foresee the event taking place in California but we absolutely will keep pushing forward.
"I think we’re going to have to push the dates to June 15/16. I’ll confirm asap. It’s been a frustrating week but I think there’s a solution in place."
Though he gives a date, it’s not confirmed. There’s also no guarantee that the fighters announced for the May 24 and 25 cards will be able to fight on the June dates. Whatever the case may be, we’ll keep a close eye on Global Fight League. It’s quite possible that they do end up rescheduling to a different date and everyone is just panicking a little too soon.
As you can imagine, some fighters weren’t particularly thrilled.