The Global Fight League (GFL) dropped a major announcement ahead of the promotion's launch in 2025. GFL founder Darren Owen revealed on The Ariel Helwani show on Wednesday that the promotion have signed a huge amount of fighters to their roster with many being former UFC veterans.
GFL looks to stand out from other promotions by running 15 events next year that will see fighters being drafted to different teams before they compete in a season format. Many of the new signings announced by Owen will be familiar to fight fans with well-known names and former UFC champions like Luke Rockhold, Tyron Woodley, Fabricio Werdum, Anthony Pettis and Frank Mir among many, many others.
The announcement has been met with mixed reactions thus far with some fans taking issue with the team-based format and some of the talent that has joined the promotion. Many of the noteworthy names are fighters towards the end of their careers or in some cases, former competitors that had already announced their retirements.
Not to mention fighters like Wanderlei Silva and Fabricio Werdum who at 48 and 47-years old, recently revealed that they suffered from irreversible brain damage in the antitrust lawsuit against the UFC that has now been settled.
Fight fans gave their response on social media to the catalogue of names that the GFL have signed with six teams drafting 20 fighters from a pool of 300 at the start of the season.
"Bro please read all the names on this list. This is gonna be like the washed fighter Olympics"
"Nice... But Greg Hardy though"
"Rousimar Palhares??"
"Is this real? I know many are older but that is still a pretty insane start to a promotion."
"Jake Paul will come knocking for his first mma bout with the average age on that roster. And Palhares? Who thought that’d be a good idea?"
"I’m all for more competition but this is a stretch. A lot of older guys with not much left in the tank."
"*Grandpas Fight League"
"Pretty much all fighters that i would prefer to see stay retired.."
"Is that a retiring league for fighters? Like a home, or something?"