The 2024 NFL Draft kicks off Thursday in Detroit, and so in the spirit of the festivities, like we did last year and the year before, the MMA Fighting Crew is back to divvy up the best fighters and biggest stars in the world among the top promotions in combat sports.
If you don’t remember what happened last year, it’s simple: Alexander K. Lee, Damon Martin, Jed Meshew, Mike Heck, and Shaun Al-Shatti all take the reins of one of the top-five promotions in the world, and then draft their choice of fighters to build their franchises around. Once it’s all said and done, the fine readers of MMAFighting.com determine who has assembled the best collection of talent.
We’ve made a couple of small changes this year, so let’s run down the rules very quickly.
- Any individual in the MMA world is available to draft. Drafting a fighter will lock them into a 5-year contract with the organization.
- Getting a fighter under contract does not mean the fighter has to fight for that organization, they just cannot compete for any other MMA organization. For instance, if you draft Jon Jones, you run the risk of him failing a drug test, getting arrested, or simply not wanting to fight.
- The draft will be seven rounds this year (mirroring the NFL draft). At the end of the exercise, any fighter who is undrafted will revert to the company they are currently under contract with.
Last year, the five MMA promotions were BKFC, ONE Championship, PFL, Bellator, and the UFC, with Al-Shatti’s takeover of ONE Championship winning the fan vote (little did they know his roster would underperform while Martin got Sean O’Malley, Ilia Topuria, and Francis Ngannou). And just like last year, we’ve had to shuffle things up again because another MMA promotion has gone the way of the dodo: Bellator might be alive in name, but it’s a PFL joint now, so the co-leader just gets one company for drafting purposes. As a result, KSW received the call to join to big leagues and Martin Lewandowski was only too happy to hand over the managerial reigns to us.
All general managers have been randomly reassigned to new organizations, with Alexander K. Lee taking over KSW, Mike Heck taking over BKFC, Jed Meshew taking over ONE Championship, Shaun Al-Shatti taking over PFL/Bellator, and Damon Martin defending the UFC’s roster. As the new kid on the block, KSW will have the first pick, then BKFC, then ONE Championship, then PFLator, with the UFC will ending each round.
Got it? Good. Let’s get drafting.
