Natan Schulte discusses PFL return 3 years after being forced to fight a friend

Photo via PFL | Photo via PFL It’s been just over 1,000 days since Natan Schulte last fought in MMA, and he returns to the Professional Fighters League cage excited to finally resume his career. A two-time PFL season winner, the Brazilian lightweight signed a new contract with PFL years after parting ways with the organization in the aftermath of a highly criticized clash with Raush Manfio. Manfio and Schulte are teammates in Florida and close friends — Manfio is the godfather of Schulte’s daughter — but they had to face off for a spot in the 2024 lightweight playoffs.

Schulte won a decision, his fourth straight victory in the company after beating Marcin Held, Jeremy Stephens and Stevie Ray, but PFL suspended both for not using their “best efforts … skills and abilities as a professional athlete to compete … and defeat any opponent. ” Looking back now as he prepares for his upcoming bout with unbeaten lightweight Jakub Kaszuba at PFL’s upcoming event in Pittsburgh on March 28, Schulte admits he would have done things differently. “I didn’t want to pull out of the fight, but today maybe I would have, knowing everything that actually happened,” Schulte told MMA Fighting.

“It was a pretty bad situation for both of us. I probably wouldn’t have fought because it ended up feeling kind of like a set-up fight or something like that. We agreed to fight, and the fight was really bad, it wasn’t what the fans wanted, but given the circumstances, we accepted it.

When the time came, though, the fight didn’t play out as expected and it turned into a very poor performance. After that, they basically gave me a ban, took me out of the tournament, kept me under contract for a while and then released me six months later. They held me for quite a long time.