I was one of the people that was genuinely excited when it was announced that a new fight promotion was coming along to compete with UFC, which is an organization that I do enjoy but because they have no real competition, they kind of completely control the industry and this negatively affects the entire sport due to fighter pay, the fact that they don't really have to do ANYTHING that they don't to do, and lately there has been a lot of suspected fight and ranking rigging going on that denigrates the integrity of the sport overall.
When GFL was announced, and it appeared as though they had a lot of money behind it, many people were excited because not only did it look like UFC was going to have some real competition but they were mixing up the game by having regional teams and everyone was going to be competing for an overall seasonal team prize pool.
While it wasn't much of a surprise that their fighter roster was going to be mostly "has beens" and scraps from other promotions, they were getting some pretty big names to sign on, even if they were older they were still going to be big draws. Just look at the attention that Jake Paul's upcoming Rousey vs. Carano is getting despite the fact that almost no one on the card is an active fighter.
The team system was going to be pretty wild because now fighters were doing more than just trying to win a belt and then hold onto it for as long as possible thus guaranteeing bigger paychecks. Their individual performance would make or break a team point system, and lying back and simply trying to win on points and having "hugging contests" that are intended to waste the clock would now negatively affect a whole slew of other people and there would be a lot of peer pressure to shoot for finishes since KO's and submissions would give a much higher level of points for the team than winning by decision.
This was all great news until some pretty major things happened. For one thing, the creation of teams was meant to be an actual draft like they have in other sports like American football where it is a round-robin and team captains choose who their players are going to be.
A little while before the draft even happened live, the team lists leaked online complete with the "text here" template that is just hilarious and sad at the same time. The entire draft was going to be a farce but for some reason, even though GFL was aware of the fact that almost everyone was aware the random nature of the draft was a lie, they went ahead with it anyway and it was plagued with technical issues online and as far as broadcast was concerned.
This was bad... very bad for GFL who rightfully faced a bunch of criticism for lying to everyone and thinking they could get away with it.
They went dark for a while and then quietly announced that the 2025 season was going to go ahead starting in May. Then the event simply never happened.
Other things such as them announcing that certain fighters had signed on with them, only to have that fighter announce on Twitter that they have not only NOT signed, but were never even contacted about it, were kind of the beginning of the death of the much anticipated promotion.
Then the investors pulled their money out and well, that was that.
GFL has been teasing on social media about how the season is going to go ahead this year but if you dig into their financials, they don't have any money... so this is likely either trolling or wishful public relations thinking on the part of whoever is behind this.
Their website is still alive but there is virtually zero information there and it kind of looks like they are simply trying to gather as much personal information about people who bother to sign up, perhaps to sell to whoever it is that someone would sell email addresses and contact information to.
This is a real shame because the idea was pretty sound and a lot of people were excited about it, even though it was basically going to be a retirement league mixed with it also being the minor leagues where UFC would almost certainly poach whatever talented person ended up there.
But now it is completely dead despite the claims they make to the contrary. I'm sure it is a massive undertaking to create anything that is global, especially something that has multiple capitol cities with various teams involved. Will someone step up and put their money behind it? I doubt it. Unless the Saudis feel like losing billions on another sport venture it does seem extremely unlikely.