ATLANTA — Sadibou Sy continues to establish himself as the man to beat in the PFL’s welterweight division, and he looks great doing it.
Sy (15-6-2) clinched his spot in the 2023 PFL playoffs on Friday with a head kick knockout of Shane Mitchell in PFL 6 inside Overtime Elite Arena. The win marked his sixth in a row, and he is looking to repeat a championship streak from 2022.
The Swedish kickboxer will enter this year’s playoffs as the No. 3 seed, but with the clear boost of a No. 1 seed. He has knocked out both of his opponents this year. His knockout on Friday came in the second round of a fight he was already putting together. Mitchell went down and the fight was stopped without a follow up shot.
Sy will face No. 2 seed Carlos Leal, who eliminated Dilano Taylor on Friday, in the semifinals. Sy defeated Leal (19-4) by unanimous decision in last year’s playoffs. Former champion Magomed Magomedkerimov (32-6) is the No. 1 seed at welterweight thanks to a quick finish from David Zawada on Friday. He will face Magomed Umalatov in the semifinals.
Lightweight Olivier Aubin-Mercier (19-5), another 2022 PFL champion, also clinched his ticket to the 2023 playoffs with a third-round finish of Anthony Romero in Friday’s main event. The fight was called off in the second round after Aubin-Mercier landed a devastating knee to Romero’s chin along the fence.
Aubin-Mercier clinched the No. 2 seed and will face another former PFL champion in Natan Schulte (25-5-1), who earned a decision victory over Raush Manfio in a bizarre fight in which two best friends met. they faced. Fan favorite Clay Collard (23-10) will seek his first PFL championship as the No. 1 seed. He will face Bruno Miranda (16-3) in the semifinals.
Shane Burgos (16-4), a major PFL acquisition in 2022, earned a win over Yamato Nishikawa on Friday but failed to make the playoffs. It’s unclear if Burgos will fight again in 2023 now that he’s missed the PFL playoffs. He lost a decision to Aubin-Mercier in the first round of the regular season in April.
