Home Articles MMA India Exclusive: Jon Fitch reveals the reasons behind his PFL departure

MMA India Exclusive: Jon Fitch reveals the reasons behind his PFL departure

MMA veteran and the former PFL welterweight champion, Jon Fitch was recently released from the Professional Fighters League. At the time of the termination of his contract, Fitch was still the promotion’s welterweight champion. Fitch has now come out and revealed the reasons behind his sudden departure from the promotion, in an exclusive interview given to MMA India.

 

PC: MMA Weekly

Fitch is a veteran and is considered by many to be a legend of the sport. He has a record of 30-7-2 and was once considered to be one of the best welterweights in UFC history. He also holds an amazing UFC record to his name, i.e. the record for the most strikes landed in UFC history (2249). He last fought and defeated Brian Foster at PFL 1 via submission due to a side choke.

PFL is an American mixed martial arts promotion based in Washington. It was formerly known as the World Series of Fighting, a.k.a WSOF. Fitch had won the company’s welterweight title in a fight against Joao Zeferino, by defeating him via unanimous decision at WSOF 30.

Fitch’s sudden departure had raised a lot of questions. However, he has now cleared all the air surrounding his release. The former NCAA division 1 wrestler was recently a guest on The MMA India Show and was asked about the problems with PFL by MMA India’s noted combat sports journalist, Akhilesh Gannavarapu. Fitch described that his departure was due to the fact that PFL weren’t honouring the contract they had in place and due to wage issues. Here’s what he had to say:

“I don’t like the direction things were going. We had specific language in our contract that made sure, I wasn’t left around sitting without fighting. However, that’s what happened. It’s unacceptable. We as fighters, we sign contracts and are forced to uphold them. We cannot escape the language of our contracts. It’s BS to me that the promoters can just choose, what part of a contract they want honoured. I just forced them to honour the contract and they had three choices which were to fight me three times by June or pay me for those fights or they had to release me.

In my contract, I was supposed to be fighting in December but that didn’t happen. I was then also supposed to be fighting three fights within the year from last June. That too didn’t happen and they weren’t planning on doing any fights till the coming June. So it’s unacceptable, I can’t feed my children if I don’t fight. We had an agreement, honour the agreement one way or another.”

 

You can watch the full interview with Jon Fitch here:

 

 

 

 

 

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