{"id":4435,"date":"2026-03-02T21:00:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-02T21:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/4435\/"},"modified":"2026-03-02T21:00:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-02T21:00:07","slug":"highly-touted-belgian-prospect-to-face-ex-ufc-champ-in-pfl-brussels-headliner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/4435\/","title":{"rendered":"Highly-Touted Belgian prospect to face ex-UFC champ in PFL Brussels headliner"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Sherdog<\/a>Mon, March 2, 2026 at 8:29 PM UTC\"\"<\/p>\n

Patrick Habirora is a star on the rise in PFL. | PFL MMA<\/p>\n

Undefeated Professional Fighters League<\/a> prospect Patrick Habirora<\/a> will look to add a significant feather to his cap when he returns to action in his home country.<\/p>\n

The promotion announced on Monday that Habirora will lock horns with former UFC<\/a> lightweight champion Benson Henderson<\/a> in the PFL Brussels<\/a> main event at ING Arena in Brussels, Belgium, on May 23. Henderson will be returning to active competition for the first time since March 2023. Habirora vs. Henderson will be contested at 170 pounds.<\/p>\n

Prospect vs. Veteran<\/p>\n

Habirora has been victorious in his first eight professional outings, finishing all but one via knockout or technical knockout. In 2025, he scored first-round KO victories against UFC veterans Danny Roberts<\/a> and Kevin Jousset<\/a> in his two PFL appearances.<\/p>\n

A former UFC lightweight champion, Henderson hasn\u2019t competed in MMA since March 2023, when he suffered a first-round submission loss to Usman Nurmagomedov<\/a> at Bellator 292. Since then \u201cSmooth\u201d has stayed busy with a variety of combat sports ventures, including appearances in grappling, boxing and Karate Combat. Most recently, Henderson lost to Aljamain Sterling<\/a> via technical fall at Real American Freestyle 6 this past Saturday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mon, March 2, 2026 at 8:29 PM UTC Patrick Habirora is a star on the rise in PFL.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4436,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[3448,18,3450,3456,3451],"class_list":{"0":"post-4435","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-brussels","8":"tag-benson-henderson","9":"tag-brussels","10":"tag-patrick-habirora","11":"tag-professional-fighters-league","12":"tag-ufc"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4435","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4435"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4435\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4436"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}