The MMA Promotional Landscape

追加: 2026-05-24

[00:00:00]The UFC has a firm grasp on the number one MMA promotion spot. However, 2026 and 2027 are shaping up to be pivotal years in the MMA industry with new players emerging and re-emerging like crazy. So, let's break it down. MVP MMA was better than expected. None of the worst case scenarios ended up happening.

[00:00:19]So, that is good, but in hindsight, it ended up being a very paint by numbers card with a lot of layups. And I saw a ton of people in the lead up and afterwards saying that anyone who had any doubts needs to apologize. They're just UFC bots and a ton of other, quite frankly, meaningless discourse. Cool, you guys got 17 million views and you sold more tickets than it looked like.

[00:00:39]But by the time the event started, they were practically handing out tickets.

[00:00:42]So, talking about the arena being mostly full, but also prefacing that by saying that a lot of the tickets were given to first responders and armed forces members means that you don't really have accurate numbers. You can call it the most watched MMA event of all time, but anyone with a brain understands that those words are somewhat hollow when you broadcast to a potential audience of 350 million. Nakisa Bidarian said that if UFC Freedom 250 was also on Netflix, Rousey and Carano would still be bigger, and that's hogwash. Saying that and having Ronda Rousey talk [ __ ] about Shevchenko and all of this confrontation doesn't help their case. It doesn't help their likeability as a promotion. No Mo Fazeel, one of the young bright spots on the card, is signed to fight on the Contender Series. Saladin Parnasse's manager was at UFC HQ. [music] They've potentially just lost these guys that were kind of the future of their promotion, and it seems like they haven't really made a huge effort to keep these guys. If there's one thing that's true about MMA, it's that you cannot kill Scott Coker. He's akin to a fun version of terminal cancer. The doctors will say that you're in remission, but you know it isn't true.

[00:01:44]You know he'll be back, and you're sort of relieved that he'll be back. He's starting a new promotion with the financial backing of the same guy who financially backed Strikeforce. So, that's cool. I wonder what they're going to call it.

[00:01:54]You You are not going to believe this.

[00:01:57]Scott is great at being the second best, so I'm very hopeful for this promotion.

[00:02:01]And once again, more options are always a good thing. Like if Muhammad Mokaev burns bridges with a couple more promotions, he'll have filled up his punch card, and he'll actually get a discount on some strike MMA merch. Me personally, I'm putting it towards a Scott Coker plushy, but Mokaev is his own man, so he'll probably pick something more effeminate like a t-shirt. So that's pretty cool, but only $60 million doesn't really feel like enough for a global fight league. No.

[00:02:27]Darren Owen and his gaggle of friends have re-emerged, and they've gotten stronger. Just about everybody in their talk could see that the funding was going to fall through last time, except the people that mattered. So while big names like Tyron Woodley got the coast on their signing bonus, some lower-level guys got robbed of about 9 months of their careers. So these guys have some serious atonement to do. How are they going to do it? Ask their fighters to donate. Or I mean, invest in their publicly traded company. Pay to play, baby.

[00:02:56]It's going to collapse again, isn't it?

[00:02:58]They brought on some new personnel for this one. They got a guy who ran Pepsi for a little bit. They got a guy who funded the World Series of Fighting for a little bit. They got like quite a few people who are two to three degrees separated from Jeffrey Epstein, which I guess isn't that hard, but still notable. As of March 31st, they have 552 different shareholders, or as business insiders like myself call them, suckers.

[00:03:21]So these guys have 552 suckers, and the public financials that I've looked over are not great. There's a lot to look at, so when more information does come out, there will be a new GFL video. I know the people have been begging. They've been practically kicking down my door for one. But for now, it is just a Ponzi scheme again. Pretty soon these guys are going to start selling GFL-branded bridges. The PFL, on the other hand, is making decent moves. Ever since they took down Davis out of the CEO role and elevated John Morgan, things have been looking better. Maybe they'll even be profitable by 2030, cuz that's the rule.

[00:03:54]That's the goal now. Every couple of years the PFL's financial department says they'll be profitable in the next 3 years, and it never happens. They have more shady investors than a Middle Eastern gazebo company, and I'm supposed to take these guys seriously. They screwed Paul Hughes over twice. He won 60% of the rounds, took 100% of the fouls, and somehow this is a losing equation. If I talk too loudly about One Championship, they'll send a nimble Asian assassin to my door. So, we'll keep it on the down low, but they are not retaining talent. Their MMA branch is collapsing, they're suing Rodtang, who's possibly their biggest draw, and they also aren't profitable. A lot of MMA promotions are just throwing money on their problems and hoping that things stick. I personally think it would be a whole lot easier to just not run a deficit and slowly scale up, but who am I to judge? Rizin, my dearly beloved, is kind of just chugging along though. They aren't punching up or punching down, they're punching straight across, 90° angle type [ __ ] slowly growing, looking to move into some new markets while not abandoning their core fan base. That's probably the best way to go about it.

[00:04:56]But, all these companies see the UFC success and try to beat for beat replicate its current status. Why not go through some of your own early 2000s hardships and find a new, fresh way to grow? Like, The Ultimate Fighter was the UFC's big growth tool, right? You can't just skip to the final product, and you sure as hell can't do it by being confrontational. Let me know how you feel about the state of MMA in the comment section below. Like, comment, and subscribe for more MMA content.

[00:05:20]Shout out to Proletarian Gothic, Vanny, George Orwell, and Ron Woody for being vampiric enjoyers. Thank you all so much for watching. Some of these guys really need to learn promotional foreplay, and have a good time.