The Super Fight League website has been amended and no longer includes SFL5, SFL 6 and SFL 7 in the future events section. The initial schedule is still available on wikipedia (although presumably it could be amended any minute) and lists events in Chennai in October, Hyderebad in November and Mumbai in December.

Although no official announcement regarding the removal of these events has been made it seems probable that they have been cancelled which would leave the SFL with just one show booked, on September 29 in Bangalore. That card is expected to feature Satoshi Ishii vs Jimmy Ambriz and Jeff Monson vs Todd Duffee but it appears it could also be the last event the SFL ever holds.

Filming is due to start any day now on the SFL Challengers reality TV show (read more about that here) and the SFL also just signed a distribution deal with The Fight Network in North America but it appears that these last ditch attempts to save the sinking ship have not been successful.

Insiders say that SFL Challengers has already suffered a series of setbacks with Chaitanya Gavli one of a number of fighters to have walked away due to problems supposedly related to late payments. Whereas in the past the SFL brought in Dennis Hallman at huge expense in order to coach fighters costs have now been cut to the extent that the SFL was unable to afford a single established fighter to work on the 'Challengers' series and instead the coaches will be SFL COO Daniel Isaac, who has no MMA experience, and a female Serbian fighter called Sanja Sucevic.

The organization did appear to be moving in the right direction by signing a number of fighters to exclusive contracts including Jeff Monson, Satoshi Ishii, Rameau Thierry Sokoudjou, and Michael Page and announcing four more shows for the remainder of 2012 as well as the reality show.

However the sudden removal of three of those events from the SFL website will be a major concern for the likes of Monson and Ishii who all face an uncertain future as they are potentially signed to a promotion which only plans to host one more event.

It's possible that this could be an administrative error and that the events have only been temporarily removed but this seems unlikely and multiple sources in India claim that with no prospect of turning a profit any time soon the SFL's financial backers are rapidly starting to lose faith and are reluctant to invest any more money.

Ticket sales for the first two SFL events were disastrous which led organizers to make the unprecedented decision to give tickets away for SFL 3 in Delhi. It does seem bizarre that the three events should be postponed / cancelled with so much money already invested in SFL 'Challengers' so perhaps there is a more mundane explanation but this looks a lot like the beginning of the end for the SFL.

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