Shane Burgos Leaves UFC To Sign With PFL
Fan favorite featherweight Shane Burgos has announced he will be leaving the UFC and taking his talents to the PFL.
Burgos had just wrapped up an 11-fight stint with the world’s largest MMA promotion, winning the final bout on his contract against Charles Jourdain at UFC Long Island: Ortega vs. Rodriguez.
“I love being a UFC fighter,” Burgos said of entering free agency in early August,” but it doesn’t make sense for me to not ‘test the waters.’ But we’ll see what they come back with. It would be negligent of me and disrespectful to my family to not even hear other numbers, and I would love to hear some other numbers.”
The other numbers must have been pretty good, as the fighter announced that he had signed to compete with the PFL during a recent interview with the MMA Hour (transcript via MMA Fighting).
“It was not an easy decision,” Burgos admitted, speaking of leaving the UFC. “It was an offer—I couldn’t turn it up. I’ve got two daughters; I’ve got to go back home, I’ve got to look them in the face when it’s all said and done in this sport. With this deal I feel like that will secure that. Not taking anything away from my UFC career. Eleven fights in the UFC, that was a dream when I was 14 years old. I saw it for the first time on TV when I was 12 and was like, ‘That’s what I want to do.’ When I was 14 I made the decision, I started training at 15, and the UFC gave me the platform to be able to be in this position right now and then secure the deal that I just secured with the PFL. [Sean Shelby, Dana White, Hunter Campbell, Mick Maynard], all the guys at the UFC, I can’t thank you guys enough.”
This development is quite surprising, considering Dana White recently seemed quite confident that he would be signing Burgos to a new deal.
“Yeah, we would definitely re-up him,” White responded, when asked about Burgos’ contract status. “He’s a savage.”
“Shane?” he added, when asked if the UFC liked having Burgos on New York cards. “You can put Shane in fucking Timbuktu and people are going to be happy to have him on the card. He’s the kind of guy that people love to see fight.”
However, according to Burgos, the PFL offer was so good it could not be matched by the UFC. He stated that he could become a “multi-millionaire” if everything goes to plan and he wins the organization’s next season and the $1 million prize that comes with it.
“Last time [I negotiated with the PFL] it was relatively close,” Burgos explained, speaking of his previous stint of free agency with the UFC, after defeating Makwan Amirkhani in 2019. “That’s why I was like, ‘It’s not that big of a difference.’
It was a bigger difference [this time]. It was a six-figure difference back then—what I was going to get paid from the PFL—and I turned that down to stay with the UFC. Now, it’s obviously bigger than that.”
“When it’s all said and done after the first season—obviously, I plan on winning—I’ll be a multi-millionaire.”
There is still no word as to when we will see Burgos’s PFL debut.