Kaszuba Survives Hughes’s Early Success to Keep PFL Europe Gold
Jakub Kaszuba stopped Connor Hughes in the fourth round to win a second consecutive PFL Europe lightweight championship on December 14, 2024. Their Lyon final ended at 4:07 after Kaszuba recovered from significant danger and imposed his ground attack.
How the story unfolded
Hughes found success early with accurate counters and hurt Kaszuba during the opening exchanges. In the second round, an uppercut dropped the defending champion, and Hughes followed with ground strikes before threatening a rear-naked choke.
Kaszuba escaped the submission and began shifting the contest through top control. The third round brought repeated takedowns, positional advances and elbows, leaving Hughes increasingly occupied with defense rather than the counterstriking that had worked earlier.
The result and its significance
The same pressure continued in the fourth. Kaszuba moved through dominant positions, landed sustained ground offense and kept working after warnings for Hughes to improve his defense. The referee eventually stopped the contest, completing the comeback.
Kaszuba had reached the final after victories over Kane Mousah and Daniele Scatizzi during the 2024 campaign. Hughes’s early attack made the last step difficult, but the champion’s response produced another tournament title. The final was decided through a fourth-round stoppage after an extended momentum swing, with Kaszuba’s ability to survive and then control the ground exchanges proving more important than his difficult start.
Sources
- pflmma.com: jakub kaszuba gets rocked and falls behind but pulls off comeback tko to capture backtoback pfl europe lightweight titles
- pfleurope.com
Article Tags
Jakub Kaszuba, Connor Hughes, PFL, MMA
