Carmouche accuses PFL of shielding Ditcheva after being denied flyweight title shot

Liz Carmouche has accused the PFL of sidelining her from a flyweight title shot to protect Dakota Ditcheva, after the promotion booked the two women against different opponents rather than each other in 2026.

Carmouche won the 2025 PFL flyweight season with victories over Ilara Joanne, Elora Dana, and Jena Bishop — a tournament that did not include reigning 2024 champion Ditcheva. With PFL transitioning away from its seasonal format heading into 2026, Carmouche expected the logical next step to be a unification bout against the English flyweight. Instead, she faces UFC veteran Viviane Araujo in San Diego on June 27, while Ditcheva is scheduled to return a month later against Denise Kielholtz.

“I thought coming out of the tournament that the only match-up that made sense was last year’s champion versus the year prior champion, but they have a different agenda,” Carmouche told MMA Fighting on Tuesday.

Asked directly whether Ditcheva is avoiding her, Carmouche was blunt. “It certainly seems that way,” she said. “Of course, I want to be fighting the best and prove that I’m the one that deserves to be having that belt. But I certainly understand they want to protect their future. They invested a lot of money into her, and she’s the face of PFL. So you certainly don’t want to give it to somebody who’s in their 40s — you want to give it to the young 20-year-old.”

Carmouche said she was told the separate booking reflected Ditcheva’s own preferences. “As far as I’m being told, it’s at her pace and her wants, not mine,” she said.

Despite the frustration, Carmouche considers herself the de facto flyweight champion under PFL’s new format, arguing that the title should not carry over from a previous season into a restructured competition. “In my mind, I’m the most recent champion,” she said. “The way the format was before, if you won the title in 2023, you start in 2024 and it’s a clean slate. It doesn’t carry over from the previous year. So if I was the last holder and now we’re going back to the original MMA format, in my mind it makes sense that I am the current champion.”

Carmouche does believe a meeting between the two is ultimately unavoidable. “I think it’s an inevitable outcome,” she said. “The only way it doesn’t happen is if she decides she wants to leave PFL and go to the UFC. That’s the only way, in my mind, to slide past and get out of this.”