MMA Fighting - Reaction: The Shocking UFC-WWE Merger & What It Means For Both Companies

Episode Date: April 3, 2023

The UFC and WWE will merge together in a new publicly traded company with combined revenue worth more than $21 billion, but what does this new partnership actually mean for the future of combat sports and professional wrestling? MMA Fighting’s Damon Martin and Alexander K. Lee react to the massive news after Endeavor closed a deal to buy a majority share in WWE that was officially announced on Monday. What does this deal do for the UFC? Will WWE performers suddenly start showing up on UFC programming? Is Conor McGregor destined to appear at WrestleMania? We’ll discuss all of that and so much more as it relates to the UFC and WWE becoming business partners under the Endeavor umbrella. Subscribe: Apple Podcasts Subscribe: Spotify Read More: MMA Fighting Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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He is Alexander K. Lee. And today here on MMA fighting, we have gotten the news that there is a massive, massive seismic shift in the sports and entertainment world as the UFC and WWE are now merging under one ownership group at Endeavor. And they will be a combined company worth revenue more than $21 billion. It's a huge massive deal. of course everyone's been buzzing about it you can read the article that i wrote over on mhmapfiting dot com and myself and uh and alexander k lee have been watching all this unfold over the last few hours actually and so let's talk about this deal what does it mean for the future of the uc what does it mean for the future of w w what does it mean for the future of sports and entertainment

a k what a day we've had already oh i thought i thought we were going to react two days later to Daniel James, Mark, knocking out Marcelo Gallum in the main event of Bell Tour 2.93. I heard the music at the top.

I was all ready to talk about how that's shaking up the Beltor heavyweight title picture. But I guess we can talk about this UFC WWE tag team. I guess, you know,

we're seeing a lot of questions about what does this exactly mean now that Endeavor is, you know, putting them into the same umbrella and it sounds like planning to, you know, kind of unite the brands.

obviously it it we say unite the brands we see merger we say stuff like that obviously and i hope most people know this when they read this i don't think it's going to just become w v iqqq or the other way around uh all at once but the potential of her crossover promotion is there it's exciting you i'm sure people have seen fighters react to it of course conne mcgregor immediately having uh his guys in the mac life whip up a graphic with him uh with a wb title belt over one shoulder and his, you know, UFC titles that he's actually held over his other shoulder. And yeah, it's a very, very cool idea. But even just from a business standpoint, boy, this is fascinating.

Just the numbers that have come out, the 20, you know, this is now, it's going to be a joint company where $21, $22 billion. You know, Damon, we always try to remind people the business side of things and like, because we talk about fighter pay a lot, you know, we talk about, and listen, wrestler pays its own thing too. And when you see the companies where $22 billion, I would hope that even if people aren't concerned about cross-motion, it's going to open their eyes to like what it means just for each promotion individually,

like that number. That's three times what they reportedly sold for back when their first purchased by Endeavor. So it's staggering, staggering news. And the last thing we expected coming out of a fairly busy weekend, even without a UFC card. Yeah, of course, this comes out on the weekend after a non-UFC event weekend and WrestleMania weekend, so it's kind of befitting. First, let me just say, like, in terms of, like, the larger deal, like, this makes a lot of

sense for both companies, because if you really think about it, and people that have followed UFC or mixed martial arts have heard me say this and you say this and other people have said this, and everyone's like, I hate when you talk about that. But the reality is, the UFC and WWW have always had a very similar business model. Like, in terms of the way they run their business, in terms of the way they pay their athletes, in terms of the way promotion. And obviously you have a pair of bombastic guys at the top with Dana White and Vince McMahon. I mean, those two are, I mean, cut from the same cloth almost feels unfair with how much they share in common.

So, I mean, putting these two together was in a way like a stroke of genius for Ari Emanuel and Endeavor because they had already built up the UFC. As you mentioned, bought it for $4.02 billion. Now it's worth over $12.1 billion, which is an astronomical increase in just, under seven years. You know, WBE, I think, is a value to write around 9.1 billion, 9.1 billion or 9.2 billion somewhere around there. But, yeah, so, I mean, first and foremost, it makes a lot of sense when you think about the business models, because as much as people like to, you know, UFC is not WWE, it is.

It always has been, whether you like it or not. UFC has been more closely related to WWE than any other professional sports organization out there. When you talk about the way the UFC has been run and the way the UFC has been promoted, they share far more similarities with WWE than they ever did with NFL, Major League Baseball, NBA. And that's not even getting into like the whole like, that doesn't even get into like unions and things like that. I'm not even getting, I'm not even touching that part of it. I'm just saying like in the way they run their businesses, Vince and Dana are again kind of mirror images of each other a lot of ways. So this makes sense on that regard.

Real quick, I do want to say, though, the funny thing about this whole deal is immediately everyone starts flipping out and talking about like the crossover stuff, which is kind of hilarious to me because like Connor, Connor has some fun with. Everyone's going to have fun with. I know Terrence McKinney put out a thing like who's the first one going through a table. Of course everyone's going to have fun with it. But let's be honest here, outside of I think like promotion, like I think when we go to like UFC 287 is this weekend.

they may advertise for WWE backlash, which is their next major event. We may see that. And tonight on Monday Night Raw or Smackdown later this week, we may see them promote UFC 287 because that is this weekend. But to get it out of your heads right now that you're going to start seeing crossover in terms of the entertainment part of it, I think you might see WWE guys show up sit front row at UFC 287, and they'll be there to do interviews.

They might do some backstage interviews and things like that, just to kind of build the star power. build the synergy between the two companies. And same thing. You might, you know, Daniel Cormier, huge part of the UFC. We know he loves wrestling. There's a good chance you may see him show up in a WWE thing again. He was already over there refereeing once upon a time.

We may see him show up and sit in front row. We may even see him get involved in like some sort of angle. But the reality is you're not going to see Connor McGregor show up on UFC programming on Saturday and then show up at raw like at some kind of like pre-programmed like inter, it's just that's not going to happen. They're never going to blur those lines where, you know, we're going to start suddenly seeing crossover where like the next CM Punk is going to come over and fight in UFC. That's not going to happen. I just, I want to put that out of people's minds right now because it's fun to talk about. But it's, come on, we all know bad.

That's not, they're not going to do that because that would, that, that goes against the idea this deal, these two companies coming together and want to make a boatload of money. Even don't spoil people's dreams. Don't spoil fantasy booking. We have a little bit of fantasy booking, you know, when it comes to, like, making matches in the UFC and an MMA. But, like, fantasy booking is such an enormous part of pro wrestling culture. So please do not ruin this. There's like a million think pieces out there being written about, you know, oh, my gosh, could Roman Reigns fight John Jones? Could Connor McGregor fight?

I don't know, Edge or something. Like, and that's cool. Listen, let people have their fun. And I don't want to say it'll never happen. But, yeah, the crossover here, really, the crossover appeal. is really like really cornering that that coveted 18 to 34 demographic. I think that's something people need to keep in mind because you were right, you were talking about how the similarities as far as how the business is run and things

like that. But as much as some M.A fans bristle at pro wrestling and some pro wrestling fans bristle at MMA, people have realized those are extremes, like those are extreme opinions. There's a huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, I would say the majority chunk in the middle that has a passing interest in both. Listen, there's an older audience that's never going to get into MMA. There's, and kids as well, kids, you know, there's a certain age, you probably don't want them watching MMA. Why pro wrestling is more acceptable, I'm not entirely sure.

But again, that seems to be the public consensus that it's okay for kids to watch pro wrestling and not MMA because it's scripted because it's fake. But I think it's just as, it can be just as sort of violent at times. But that little middle graphic, 18 to 34, you guys, M.A fans might want to get used to this because I don't know if they, they pay attention to it, but it's a big thing in pro wrestling, hitting that demographic, not just the overall rating, but hitting the 18 to 34. Because MMA had a UFC specifically had a big problem with that for a while, I would say before kind of Connor McGregor came along.

The audience was getting a little bit older. There was kind of an old school audience. I remember there was time, like a lot of people in their, like younger people, didn't really follow MAA hardcore. I'm people going to say I'm crazy, but really, but then McGregor came and there's this huge wave of, I mean, of younger fans coming in. Now you have Shauna Malley and people like that leading the charge.

So if W.E and UFC can get in the same pages of that and help each other, maybe W.E can help UFC appeal to, again, that sort of older, traditional fight crowd, like that older boxing crowd. And again, again, and again, I don't know if that's a wise idea. But if you can somehow get kids to start getting to M.A., I'm sure that's what they would love that. And vice versa, maybe UFC can bring a little more edge to the WV product. and hone in on, again, this sort of coveted audience.

So it's going to be fascinating because there is Crosswall already, and I wonder if they can expand it more or if it's just going to, it's, they're just kind of stuck on, you know, focusing what they already have. But I'm sure the plan is always expansion. Well, I think a big part of it, too, is because, as I said, the two companies already do a lot of things similarly.

You know, they both, you know, WBE, one thing you give them credit for, like, WVE, like, really attached themselves to the internet and streaming. You know, they were really big into that. obviously we know that's huge with the UFC now with ESPN Plus and things like that. So that was a big deal. And they both have huge presence on social media. They both tackled that, you know, way ahead of time. I think they were, UFC and WWE both saw the writing on the wall that social media was going to be a huge part of their, you know, separate businesses.

And they both have a massive presence on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, all those kind of things. Again, these are similarities. These companies have both done this. You know, Dana has talked about, Vince McBeck. Ben has talked about it. You know, credit, like I said, Vince McGrane has a lot of things we can talk about he's done wrong, but in terms of what he's done right, getting out in front of things like digital media and internet and social media. These are all things that he's done and Dana also did. So working together, I think that that, this is the behind the scene stuff that doesn't sound that

interesting, but that's where they're really going to work together and probably become even bigger because they're going to expand that relationship and help each other in that regard. I don't think, as again, I don't think we're going to see the big crossover TV events that everyone thinks they're going to see. I think what we're going to see is, you know, what UFC does well on social media, they'll help to integrate the WWE. What WWE does well on production, maybe they have a production like schedule or production, you know, the way they produce live events. They'll help UFC do that a little bit better. Little things like that, that's what they're going to do. But ultimately, you got to remember, ever since Endeavor bought the.

UFC, they've been in a, what's called a shared sports properties with Endeavor. There's also the PBR, the professional bull riders. When that deal got done, we didn't suddenly see Connor McGregor riding to the octagon on a bull, okay? That didn't happen. If only. If only. But Endeavor's live events programming and things that they do with that in terms of

the growth, that's what we're going to see. That's where they're going to work together and get better. You know, what I think production, like the one thing, I don't, I have no clue. I have no insight knowledge with this. is actually going to happen. But we always joke about, like, how the UFC has kind of become the unfun championship. Like, it's not nearly, like, they kind of taken the personality away from the fighters and with uniforms and all the walkouts look the same.

And, you know, it's kind of, you know, it's kind of just like, you know, one event looks exactly like the next event. And very rarely it doesn't feel special unless it's just a big fight like we have coming up with Adasanya Pereira where the fight itself feels big. But the rest of it kind of feels the same as always. I really hope that that's one aspect they do because there's one thing that WWE does really well. It's the pageantry surrounding their events. Now, I'm not saying they're going to suddenly have, you know, Adasanya is going to walk out wearing one of Rick Flares robes,

although he did dress as The Undertaker once upon a time. But I don't think we're going to see that. But I think what we could see is, you know, why does that appeal to people? And they'll have that conversation now. Why does it appeal to people to have these grand entrances to give people more personality and more say, over little things like that. Could that happen? Yeah, that's a possibility.

So I think those little things are going to be good. And I think the biggest, the elephant in the room, aka we haven't really talked about, and this is the big one. I think this ultimately is what led to the deal being done with Endeavour. WWE has a television rights deal coming up next year, I believe. The UFCs comes up in two years from ESPN. both are going to have gargantuan media rights deals. I mean, you can talk about the changing landscape of TV, and it is.

But ultimately, Monday Night Raw and SmackDown are two still very profitable, very high-rated programs. Then you got the UFC with, you know, every, basically every Saturday night, there's a UFC card of some kind. And then obviously once a month you get a pay-per-view, which is always huge business. In some, obviously not all of them, but in some form of fashion, big pay-per-view business. I don't, we've already heard from Nick Con the CEO or the president of WWE that they're not going to package UFC and WW together for linear rights. What that means is, you know, ESPN, ABC, Fox, ESPN, like regular television. But he said they could potentially package them together for a streaming deal, which the streaming deal is maybe Amazon jumps in and says, hey, Jeff Bezos says, hey, I've got all the money in the world. I want to get WWE and UFC on my network, Amazon Prime Video.

or Tim Cook comes over and says Apple wants to get in business. We want both. And they'll make some huge mega deal for that. That is where this money is. That's ultimately, AKB, on anything else, you ask the long term, this is going to be a money thing. I mean, obviously, it's why they're doing this to make money. But the television rights deals coming up for both companies in the next two years, guarantee you that is 100% what sold them on buying WWW right now.

Because Endeavor was already negotiating the television rights. for WWE. They were already the agent, so to speak, for WWE. So they know what the marketplace is. They understand what people are willing to pay for live sporting events or live events in general. There's no way they didn't get some sense of somebody shelling out billions upon billions of dollars to get those rights in 2024, 2025 that didn't get them to say, you know what, we're going to make our money back in like two seconds here. We're going to make our money back and start just printing money. And then the UFC comes up right after that.

Oh, my God. I mean, that is the deal, AK, that is the deal. That is why this deal happened, because they knew the television rights deals were coming up, and they were looking at the dollar signs and looking at the zeros that were going to be added to everybody's bank accounts. Yeah.

Listen, first run content has always just been insanely valuable, which is why live sports has always done well, even as ratings have dropped for like, you know, conventional sort of TV programming. Live sports is always going to do well. And that's why Monday Night Raw, they always say the longest running, you know, original program or whatever for however many years. You mentioned Smackdown and UFC now has his fight nights. I'm trying to imagine.

And then the paper views, all of this being like under one, one on one streaming service, one streaming service having sort of a one stop shop appeal for all your combat. sports needs. It'd be insane. It'd be a hell of a blow to strike in the streaming wars. I don't know. It's going to cost a pretty penny, though, as you said, Damien, because obviously Endeavor is going to shop these properties around, hoping to bundle them together and just get a massive payday for it. And I wonder what streaming service is going to be able to sort of take the financial risk on that. Because, again, they always need content. If it's, if it's something producing, again, original first-run content, 52 weeks a year,

for in perpetuity it's it's it's pretty great it's pretty great because again a lot of uh streaming services have done you know they carry live sports but you know every live sport has an off season except for fresh wrestling and the ufc they're they're non-stop there is no off season you're literally paying for 52 weeks of content a year so uh it's going to be it's going to be pretty crazy to see uh who gets it if it does end up being in one place we could still see these see these properties end up getting split it could be you see you know stream somewhere else to be some stream somewhere else, but I think you're right. I think the goal is, let's get it all in one platform.

Let's get that money in there. And you got to remember, just to throw this out there, when Amazon did their Thursday night football deal with the NFL, that was over a billion dollars for one game. Now, yes, the NFL ratings are astronomical compared to everything else. They are the king. That's why the NFL gets the money. But they paid a billion dollars for one game over 16 weeks, basically. And it's a Thursday game.

It's like the least appealing. of the NFL docket. Yeah, it's the game. It's the game the players seem to hate the most because it's just a short turnaround. If you're playing on Sunday to play again on Thursday. They paid over a billion dollars for that. Now, I'm not saying that, you know, you have C and WWW are going to get billion-dollar deals, but that just gives you, like, a few years ago, everyone said the bubble had popped on live

sports deals because so many streamers were getting into the space. And if you notice, like, television ratings, when you look at ratings nowadays, and again, this is getting really into like the weeds and like the you know the really inside baseball stuff but ratings today like what is the number one programming on tv like yellowstone is the biggest television show on cable the ratings of that compared to even the walking dead when it was huge like 10 years ago are huge they're different it's like half because so much because there's so a rerun a rerun of friends from like 15 years ago has like an insane rating compared to like yeah yeah so like people have to change their expectations, first off, because that's different, right? But everyone thought, oh, well,

streaming's coming along, Amazon and Apple, all these places are coming along. It's going to kill cable and there's not going to be linear television. No. People, that ultimately the one thing that is bulletproof when it comes to money and broadcast deals are live events. That's what people will still pay for because you, that's not something you can tune in, go on Netflix and binge watch on a Friday night. You want to know what happens as it happens. You don't want to be the guy or the girl who hears about Connberghger coming back and knocking out some opponent. You want to watch it as it happens. That's what live sports says. That's just like the Super Bowl or any other NBA, anything, any sports related content,

live content, you want to be there as it happens. And so, yeah, I don't know if they're going to package it together. I got to imagine, come on, I have to imagine they're going to try, though, because the money they could get out of somebody. And again, I'm looking specifically at Amazon as a big player in this because they have all the money in the world and Apple is another because Apple has not, you know, Apple did a deal with,

I believe it was MLS and they paid a pretty good pretty premium penny for MLS which gets a fraction of the ratings of WVE and UFC. They paid a pretty hefty penny millions of dollars for that. I mean, I wouldn't be shocked if Tim Cook, who has more money than God

you know, on hand, like in terms of cash on hand Apple has just boatloads of money, did they just throw up just a bucket of money at ARIA and said, we want all of it. We want everything on Apple TV. And that's what they plant their flag in because they didn't get you. They didn't get NFL. There's rumors they might make a play for NBA because NBA rights are coming up right now. They're not, you know, Major League Baseball, sorry to say, that's a much older skewing demographics. So that's not nearly as much interest. And hockey kind of the same thing where

people just aren't willing to pay as much for that. But if you get the 18 to 34 and 18 to 49-year-old demographic. You can get UFC with a show basically every weekend or at worst every other weekend. And you can get WWE with two programs per week. Now, again, I don't know how much this is going to play into the, you know, striking a deal with ESPN versus ABC, NBC, Fox, those kind of things. But if you're Tim Cook and Apple and you've got, you know, $100 billion on hand or what a ridiculous amount of money they have laying around, you're not going to throw, you know,

a couple billion dollars to get these two together on your network and suddenly Apple TV becomes a destination that every UFC fan or every WVE fan suddenly has to have and you charge a premium price right now Apple TV I think is like $5.99 a month imagine we could charge $15.99 a month and what UFC or WV fan is not going to pay that they will we know they will. Damon we're talking about money a lot which I think means we have to touch upon one really kind of sad part of this is that you've seen a lot of the fighters kind of go like and Jake Pollack going like, I wonder what effect this will have on fighter pay. Guys, I, listen, what effect did Endeavor purchasing UFC back, you know, years ago have on

fighter pay? Not much. Not much. It probably went up a little bit. But that's like unrelated. That's probably more related to inflation than them like saying, oh, well, now the company sold for this much money. We can afford to pay the fighters more.

that is never that is not how combat sports works it's never how it's worked even even in anything listen it's not just mma most combat sports athletes are are underpaid i'm talking about boxing too and i'm talking about pro wrestling a bit too as well though i would say most w pro wresters are probably pretty well compensated even down on like the nxte level they're not like millionaires but they're doing okay compared to i would say again your entry level fighter to a ufc or bellator or something like that so uh but yeah people a lot of people of fighters kind of thinking like oh I think it was Mike Davis, I think tweeted out, like, what is, is, are we going to make more money? And it's like, oh, sweet summer child, Mike Davis, great fighter.

But I can't imagine how. Because again, we're talking about the valuation, $21 billion. That valuation does not come from the UFC, you know, or telling people, telling the, telling investors. Oh, yeah, by the way, fighter pay is probably going to go up like 10, 15, 20 percent in the next five years. No, no, that's not how you get a valuation like that, guys. You are telling investors what they want to hear and what will probably be true, which in this case is, fighter pay will go up a modest amount again. Probably would have gone up with or without this sale, but not in any substantial way and not in any way that's going to hurt the O.C's bottom line.

And worst of all, not in any way that's probably going to impact in a positive way the majority of fighters' lives. So I'm supposed to be the prince of positivity, Damon, but we have to be realistic because this is something people are discussing a lot. And like I honestly just can't imagine fighter pay taking a huge jump. Especially again, you know, lower, lower tier fighters. Oh, yeah, 100%. Yeah, you got, let's just like me, let's just close the door on that right now because the reality is, you know, there's, listen, the UFC was purchased for $4.02 billion in 2016. It is now worth $12.1 billion less than seven years later. That didn't.

So that's basically, that's basically three times as much that's tripled in value in less than seven years. Has fighter pay tripled in the last seven years no. Why is that? Because when we hear about, and I've done tons of reports on it, you can look on MMAFighting.com, great website. It's a still debt, Jedman Shoes line. You can go and look at any of the revenue reports I've done on MMA fighting and see when they talk about record revenue, record revenue,

over and over again these last couple of years since, even during the pandemic, they were making huge sums of money because the EOC came back when other organizations weren't. They've made huge revenue. Now, they're touting this revenue and profits and sponsorships and all these different things. Not to say fighter pay hasn't gone up. It has, but not dramatically. The fighters aren't suddenly earning 50% of the revenue where they were earning 18%,

which is about what they earn now. They didn't do that. Why did they not do that? Because their revenue is so high. That's how they keep their revenue high. They're not going to suddenly start paying people double. and then the entire profit margin gets slashed and a half? No.

I mean, again, will there be a time because these companies merge and they start making a lot more money, especially with the next broadcast deal, the fighters might, you might see the minimum increase from 10,000 and 10,000 to 12,000 and 12,000, or maybe 13,000 or 13,000? You might see they're willing to shell out more money to keep a John Jones or to keep a Connor McGregor

or to keep, you know, the stars, Israel, Adasanya, or whoever, they might shell out and say, hey, we're going to give you a 3% revenue on pay-per-view buys versus the 2.5% you currently make now. Will they do that? Sure. But they're not going to suddenly say, you know what? I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Mike Davis. I don't know what you make.

Let's just say hypothetically he makes 15 and 15,000, 15,000 to fight, 15,000 win. I'm just making that number up. They're not going to suddenly say, we merge with WW. We are not $21.7 billion company. Mike Davis, you're a good dude, man. We're going to increase your contract double. You're not going to make 30. No, they're not.

That's not how to, you have to understand when you're in business. They're in business to make money. They're not going to suddenly just, you know, if the fighters are willing to fight for 30 and 30 or 15 and 15, they're not going to suddenly say, you know what, man, we really like you. We merge this company. We're going to pay you double. No, that's not how this works. It works because they merge because they know there's a bunch of money to be made.

and that's not by doubling everyone's pay just because they're a bigger company now. Yeah, listen, obligatory fighters, if any fighters are out there, there's any chance they listen to us, form a union or form some sort of pack guys, get behind some sort of movement towards benefiting your fighter pay

because it will never look at every major sports league that's also worth building. It's like a major league baseball, NFL, look at all these leagues. They have player unions, guys. They have player unions. I'm not saying that MMA as a whole has to form a traditional players union.

And again, it doesn't help that, of course, they fight under different umbrellas. I'm not saying you have to go boxing and, you know, fight for the Ali Act, but there has to be some sort of change. There has to be some sort of way to make things more equitable for the fighters because we just keep seeing these astronomical insane numbers every few years when deals like this happen.

And none of it is trickling down to the fighters. And it is so frustrating and so sad to watch because these are the people who build these companies, right? And, okay, you follow pro wrestling. probably a little bit more than I do. I like pro wrestling, been around pro wrestling. Used to be a pro wrestler. That's a little inside knowledge about me.

Is there a union for professional wrestlers? There is not. There is no union. If anything, the pro wrestling, W.E, is sort of invented the whole independent contractor, not invented independent contracting, but the way to sort of make, to abuse, for lack of veteran,

to abuse that arrangement in sports entertainment. And there's a reason that UFC also refers to their fighters as independent contractors and has also has them under sort of similar restrictions while kind of like dancing around the fact that these are employees who they make wear uniforms and have to do all kinds of obligatory things or they don't or they don't get paid or they get they get released uh wd does the same thing so uh yeah i mean they're very similar in that sense as well so it's it's frustrating to see but um i think we kind of said at the top like almost unsurprising as like a momentous as this news is.

You kind of saw it. Your eyes probably bugged out for a second. And then you very quickly did like some math in your head. And you're like, I mean, this is a match made in heaven or hell, depending how you look at it. And last thing, I'll close on this. During the investor relations call and I posted a graphic earlier today and there's another one, I guess I could post that later where they were talking to their investors. And Debra was talking to their investors about why this is such a good deal.

And one of the graphics they put up is kind of hilarious. It was talking about the benefit of UFC and WWE. And one of the big selling points was is there's no separate team ownership or any or, you know, and they control everything. Like that's literally a graphic they made that unlike NFL or MLB or whatever, they, because they don't control everything. Ultimately, you know, Roger Goodell in the NFL has a certain level of power. It was a David Silver in NBA. He has a certain level of power as the commissioner. But he doesn't rule.

He can't tell everybody what to do. Guess what? They can. Endeavor can now. They can tell what's going to happen in UFC and WWE. They can deal with all this independently of anyone oversight. And there's a reason why with Endeavor having, you know, whatever, $20 billion to throw around. They didn't buy the Phoenix Suns when that was up for sale.

They didn't buy the Washington commanders because then they would have to deal with all that bureaucracy. Then they would have to deal with being one of 32 teams and not. with WW and UFC, they own everything. They control everything. There is no outside voice that's going to say, you know what? You shouldn't do this. No, I mean, listen, Vince McMahon just settled a $14.6 million payout for all the misconduct he had in WWE. We know the controversy with Dana White earlier this year on New York City with his wife's video to win viral.

That nothing really happened. Why? And I'm not going to rehash all that we talked about, but the reality is, is again, if this was a, if this was a different company, if this was NFL or NBA, they would, I don't know, they lose their, I mean, they'd probably lose their jobs, but like there would be a lot more. If Roger Goodell got caught on video slapping his wife,

he would not be the commissioner. He would not be, he would be gone. The owners would bump him tomorrow. They don't have that problem in UFC and WWE. The only person that can overrule Vince and or Dana is Ari Emanuel. And clearly he's not going to do that. So this is, this is, this is literally the perfect marriage between two shockingly similar companies.

You mentioned the independent contract. I mean, literally they are, they are the same business. Just one does MMA and one does per wrestling. Yeah. And guess what? For every one fan that's like, oh, I hate, I hate pro wrestling. I'm not, I'm out. Or vice versa.

I hate MMA. I'm out. There's a hundred, probably a thousand others that are just looking at this news like, oh, cool. Two things I like emerging together. Not caring about, you know, again, some of the far, far reaching implications. And I'm not saying everyone has to. I'm not saying everyone has to.

Listen, there's people who go about their day and don't care about the deeper issues that are involved in a merge like this. And that's fine. That's their lives. But I'm saying that's the majority. So for people concerned about this merger and what it means for your fandom, I hope you can stick through it. I hope we get a lot of best case scenario, like like that kind of fun stuff. Maybe it's just some light crossover stuff, some good promotion.

promoting each other. But I know there's a lot of people who are worried. And if they're if they're on their way out, I don't know what I can say to sort of convince them to to not panic and come back. But again, to endeavor to the UFC to WWE, it doesn't matter because for the most part, this is going to sustain the casual audience they have and probably even grow the casual audience they have. So that's what they are.

I'm waiting to see who's the first fighter to bust out the people's eyebrow. That's all I'm really curious about at this one. Has no one done that yet? Jordan Levitt, I feel like it's just Jordan Levitt is going to. to jump on this WV thing, I think, handily. I think he's going to be doing some gimmicky stuff. So it won't be the only one. Why not?

And again, remember, have fun with it. Like I said, the people who are some people who complain for years, it's not like WW. Yes, it is. And now you're seeing why. All right, folks, we appreciate you tuning in to our little quick reaction here to the big news that the UFC and WW are going to be merged under a new company. They said they will have a new company name in the very near future.

They're expecting to start trading on the stock market in the next four to six months. once they get through all the government, red tape and everything. So we will have a whole new company, a whole new company name. They're going to trade under the symbol TKO, which is rather interesting. And we'll have a new official company name relatively soon, but they'll be trading on the stock market together. The UFC and WWB merged company sometime in the next four to six months. We'll be curious to see the stock prices and a little bit more inside info now that they're going to be even more publicly traded company as one together. So that'll be very interesting as well.

appreciate everyone tuning in because stay locked to MMA fighting for the latest on this news and everything else going on leading into 287 this weekend. For Alexander K. Lee, I'm Damon Martin. Thanks for tuning in. We'll see you soon.