Heading into 2018, Ray Cooper III was a relative unknown for anybody outside of Hawaii. He was coming off a split decision loss against Handesson Ferreira in a Mid-Pacific Championships fight that virtually nobody in the continental U.S. paid attention to. But, as a tough Hawaiian kid on the verge of breaking out, he signed up with PFL as a kind of intrigue as an unknown, because the PFL season-to-playoffs structure is meant to unearth talent while providing a million-dollar dangling carrot to the veterans of the trade.
Well, through four fights in PFL, Cooper is no longer an intrigue — he is the man to beat.