Two PFL Talents Face Ex-UFC Opposition at PFL Pittsburgh

A pair of de facto
Professional Fighters League vs. Ultimate Fighting Championship matchups are
headed to Steel City.

According to the PFL on
Thursday, its upcoming event in Pittsburgh has just added two
matchups with newly ranked participants. The organization
released its own official rankings on Tuesday, and all
combatants booked have numbers next to their names. At flyweight,
Sumiko
Inaba (8-2) will square off with Ariane
Lipski da Silva (17-11), with the two ladies toeing the line at
the UPMC Events Center in the second-largest city in Pennsylvania
on March 28.

Inaba, 34, will be looking to bounce back from a one-sided decision
defeat to Dakota
Ditcheva that some considered a “Beatdown of the Year”
candidate. That loss to the British striker ended a two-fight win
streak for the Hawaiian, who took a win on the scorecards against
Saray
Orozco and stopped Mackenzie
Stiller with strikes. The former Bellator MMA player has never competed outside of a
major organization as a professional.

“The Queen” Lipski da Silva will be walking to a cage other than
the UFC’s for the first time since 2018 when she faces Inaba. Two
years younger than her opponent, the Brazilian will serve as the
far more experienced woman, with more bouts in the UFC alone (14)
than Inaba has in her whole career (10). Lipski da Silva departed
the promotion after three straight losses, concluding her time with
the Las Vegas-based league with a record below .500.

Cold as Arce

In the other
PFL Pittsburgh matchup announced on Thursday, featherweights go
at it as homegrown PFL combatant Alexei
Pergande (7-0) welcomes Julio Arce
(21-6) to the former tournament-based organization. Every one of
Pergande’s appearances as a pro have taken place in the PFL cage,
as the youngster known as “Russian DNA” made a splash on the
defunct Challenger Series and has since gone on to build up an
undefeated record.

Pergande’s seven wins include a trio of submissions, with his two
brabo chokes of Akeem
Bashir and Ethan Goss
making him the first athlete in company history to land multiple
submissions of that type. Since then, Mark Ewen has
gone on to procure off two such chokes in the PFL Europe circuit to
tie his organizational record. The 24-year-old never competed in
any PFL tournament, instead developing as a “showcase” athlete for
his tenure thus far.

Arce’s 10-bout UFC stint came to a close in 2024 despite him coming
off a knockout win over Herbert
Burns. Ahead of that match, Arce missed weight, prompting his
departure that included a brief effort to join the ill-fated Global
Fight League. When that organization fell apart before it got
going, Arce saddled up with the Victory Fighting League promotion
in New York and rattled off a pair of victories in 2025 over fellow
UFC expats Sheymon
Moraes and Wilson
Reis.