PFL’s Sadibou Sy Relieved of ‘Crazy Weight Cut’ Concerns with Move to 205

170 ➡️ 185 ➡️ 205

2022 PFL Welterweight World Champion Sadibou Sy makes his Light Heavyweight Debut this Friday 👀

Advertisement

[ #PFLRegularSeason | Friday , April 12th | 9PM ET | 🎟️ https://t.co/9E74ugtbNE ] pic.twitter.com/TKx5t01uIW

— PFL (@PFLMMA) April 7, 2024

Sadibou Sy expects to do well at his natural body weight as he moves up two weight classes for the Professional Fighters League 2024 season.

Sy (16-7) will take on Joshua Silveira (12-2) in the light heavyweight regular season at PFL 2 on April 12 at The Theater at Virgin Hotels in Las Vegas. The Swedish veteran started his Professional Fighters League journey at middleweight in 2018 before dropping to welterweight the next season. Sy won the $1 million PFL welterweight championship in 2022.

“To be honest, I have a lot of people around me that I trust completely,” said Sy. “And after each fight, after each season, we sit down and we discuss things and we just felt that, I already won at 170. I've been fighting at 170 since 2019. It was easier for me at that point to make the weight. It just became harder and harder for me to make the weight and at one point we just thought like why not try a new weight division and I got intrigued by being the first and only one that's been competing in three different weight divisions. So for me, instead of making a crazy cut, I'm doing no cuts, so it's going to be fun.”

At 6’3” cutting down to 170 was always a monumental task for “The Swedish Denzel,” who always knew that it couldn’t go on forever. While he is moving up two weight classes, Sy expects to fare well sans intense dieting followed by a draining weight cut.

“I believe that I'm going to be able to perform well here. I'm going to compete [at] a weight that my body is used to and not having to go through the crazy weight cut and dieting for a long time in my case, to be able to make 170. It has made it better for me because I've been able to actually focus on just my craft and staying in the gym and going hard and then being able to refuel and refeed. So I actually believe that my body is going to hold up good here and I'm not concerned about the weight.

“We've always [thought] that me making 170 is not going to be something that's going to be going on for too long. So after the finals we sat down. We were going through different options that we had and we decided that this was the best route for us to go.”

Sadibou lost to Magomed Magomedkerimov in the PFL 2023 finals in November, which snapped a seven-fight winning streak. Meanwhile, Silveira racked up three consecutive first-round stoppages in the PFL 2023 season before losing to Impa Kasanganay in the light heavyweight finals.