​Photo: PFL | Caption: Sherdog.com/Ben Duffy
Dakota Ditcheva isn’t pretending anyone forgot about her, but after a year on the shelf she’s ready to remind the world why she’s a big deal. In one of the summer’s marquee events, the Professional Fighters League heads to Long Island, New York, on July 31. For its first trip to the borough, PFL is featuring two of its biggest stars: Usman Nurmagomedov defending the lightweight title against Archie Colgan in a showdown of unbeatens, and Ditcheva taking on Denise Kielholtz in the co-main event. After returning from a broken hand that kept her out since her July win over Sumiko Inaba, Ditcheva will battle Kielholtz in a non-title fight that could carry real division implications. Ditcheva, who will turn 28 the week of PFL New York, spoke with Sherdog.com about her return, the state of the women’s flyweight division, and why she believes it’s only a matter of time before she straps on the belt.
“I wouldn’t say the training has been any different,” Ditcheva said. “I’ve been in the gym the whole time I’ve been injured and afterward, so, all year round for me. It honestly just feels like I’ve just rolled into a more intense camp. It’s good to be back. The thing I did miss was the feeling of having an actual fight date. I feel like I was training without any kind of end goal. When you get into camp and you’ve got a date and opponent, it’s kind of you get those butterfly feelings, or at least I do anyway, when I wake up and get up for training. It’s nice to have that feeling back again.”
Ditcheva’s record remains pristine, and PFL continues to spotlight her as a rising star, though she acknowledges the division didn’t pause just because she did. “It’s been tough, don’t get me wrong,” she said. “I feel that the division’s been moving as well, the girls are smashing it. There are so many faces in the PFL now in my weight class, and I feel like the whole thing’s moving along without me. For someone like myself who was so busy and built it up so much, had so much media around her at times, it was a lot for me to go completely back to nothing. I still feel like people haven’t forgotten about me properly; they’re all waiting for me to come back, and it’s nice to still have that support. I felt the one thing I built with the PFL was their flyweight division from the beginning—from the PFL Europe tournament to the world stage—and now it felt like everyone was taking off without me. So, it’s good to be back.”
As one of the promotion’s faces, she knows she has a target on her back and takes trash talk in stride, with one exception: Ditcheva bristles at the notion that she’s selective about her opponents. “I would be happy to fight any of them,” she said. “Liz”