Ari Emanuel and Nick Khan sell America on Paramount & Ali Revival Act
TKO's best corporate interests are apparently supposed to be yours, too.
Joe Tessitore talks with Nico Ali Walsh about the Ali Revival Act at the Zuffa Boxing 09 event at MSG.
Our corporate Hollywood overlords at TKO are busy trying to sell the public on things the public doesn’t really want.
Ari Emanuel is busy in The Wall Street Journal pushing the Paramount-WBD merger.
Ari’s brother Rahm is busy conducting a fake-and-phony “Do I or don’t I?” media campaign to dip his toes in the 2028 Ari Emanuel US Presidential sweepstakes.
Unfortunately for Rahm, Ari is not a one-candidate man — not even with his brother potentially in the race. Ari has powerful sway over not only his brother, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro (whose state is hosting UFC 330 with Islam Makhachev vs. Ian Garry), Georgia Democrat Senator Jon Ossoff, and Republican Marco Rubio.
Nick Khan is engaging in mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to desperately revive public discussion of the apparently stalled Ali Boxing Revival Act that has little public support and is stuck in an utterly moribund US Senate.
Larry Goldberg at Boxing Insider is reporting that there is an amended version floating in the US Senate but that nobody is disclosing terms to the public.
If this report is correct, it’s shady, but also par for the course, or must we remind our readers of the last-minute wholesale changes to the text of the House version of the Ali Boxing Revival Act that took place just days before the voice vote that pased it out of the lower chamber of Congress.WWE is busy acquiring media properties like Busted Open Radio on SiriusXM to try to dominate the wrestling media conversation and generate cheap viral clips.
Update: On Thursday morning, TKO and Senate statements to ESPN confirm that the Senate’s amended version of the Ali Revival Act will be unveiled in a mark-up session after the August recess period.
As we have argued for many years to our paid subscribers at The MMA Draw, these people are exhausting. The fans have not been the primary audience that TKO plays to, nor are the fans the primary customer TKO sells its product to and have not been for a decade now.
They are counting on us not to ever smarten up.
The problem is that once someone smartens up to the TKO brass’s obsession with process over substance, it becomes easier to read their schemes and tactics. It means fewer people are willing to buy their dog food.
Calling out the combat sports billionaires does not mean we are “haters” or hate what fans like.
What we are trying to do at The MMA Draw is attempt to inform fans of UFC, WWE, and boxing how the TKO deciders see the world, who they schmooze to get their deals cut, and what we believe their goals to be.
It’s not about making ordinary fans feel powerless or stupid.
It’s about empowering fans with the information needed to create their own mental filter and understand what the calculating conquerors in the TKO C-suites are up to when they make the decisions that determine the direction of the sports we love.
$7.7B reasons for UFC to defend the Paramount-WBD merger
When Ari Emanuel managed to extract (on paper) $7.7B over seven years for UFC media rights on Paramount, it was one of the greatest sports media rights deals of all time. TKO stock soared from the $150s into the $200s.
Even better for the WME Group that owns a controlling share in TKO, this deal happened right after Ari got $1.5B for his South Park clients Trey Parker and Matt Stone.
So of course The King of Hollywood, who made his billions not in Hollywood but in combat sports, is going to defend a merger that could significantly devastate Hollywood… because, hey, Ari will be a big winner in all of this.
With the UFC, Ari Emanuel and his WME Group perfected an all-in-one soup-to-nuts production content creation package that they sold to a streaming platform as a turnkey package at an enormous profit margin.
Full spectrum WME control.
However, Ari Emanuel is not a great public salesman. He’s a masterful manipulator in one-on-one settings (see: Vince McMahon, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, David Ellison, Larry David). He’s brilliant in winning (or threatening) a room or office.
What Ari Emanuel is not — and never has been — is a master marketer to the masses. He doesn’t win the public over. He learned quickly that to build the Endeavor empire, you didn’t need to win over the world. You just needed to win over the Khaldoon Al-Mubaraks of the world.
Which is why I am not surprised that Ari Emanuel’s supposedly “fiery” Wall Street Journal editorial defending the Paramount-WBD merger landed like a thud with the public.
Here’s how Elon Musk’s Grok described Ari’s WSJ editorial.
Let’s check in on the Twitter reaction to Ari’s WSJ op-ed.
Kim Masters from Puck, which is represented by WME, didn’t hold back either:
David Poland correctly points out the obvious billionaire obsession regarding AI and Sovereign Wealth Fund backing this OVER HUNDRED BILLION DOLLAR sum of debt to finance David Ellison’s media dreams.
Charlie Gasparino, a lead media water carrier for the merger, continues to argue against California Attorney General Rob Bonta’s rationale for litigation:
The response to Mr. Gasparino is rather simple. The Ellison family chose to take on massive debt financing to build their media empire by wildly overpaying for WBD. They leveraged themselves into a corner.
Larry Ellison had to personally guarantee at least $40B of his personal fortune (primarily tied up in Oracle stock) and managed to get the Gulf States to backstop the rest of the merger in exchange for a very high % of supposedly non-voting ownership.
It’s incumbent on these networks to argue legally and politically why this merger won’t destroy a significant amount of consumer choice, media freedom, career opportunities, and shareholder value.
Simply put, Paramount focused on the process game with Makan Delrahim and Ari Emanuel. Now Paramount has hired Beth Wilkinson as their lead attorney for litigation against the state AGs.
Beth Wilkinson is a long-time Washington DC attorney who represented Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and helped Microsoft secure antitrust approval for their acquisition of Activision Blizzard.
Makan Delrahim was President Trump’s first antitrust attorney at the DOJ. Delrahim was hired by the Ellisons to expedite the legal and paperwork process to cram through the Paramount-WBD merger.
Ari Emanuel was President Trump’s personal Hollywood agent long before Trump was a politician.
Emanuel was also instrumental in facilitating the Ellisons’ purchase of Paramount by inviting David Ellison to attend two 2025 UFC events cage side, where he met with President Trump and allegedly smoothed over any concerns Trump had regarding the Paramount-Skydance merger.
Paramount didn’t bother trying to win public support for their nascent media empire. The Ellisons just bought a string of companies, made a bunch of public firings and expected the public to like it or lump it.
The media outlet still has not presented a persuasive public argument or rationale explaining why consumers, workers, or investors will benefit from a Paramount-WBD merger.
In our little corner of the combat sports world, there has been celebration that UFC is on Paramount instead of behind the ESPN+ paywall.
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has more interest in promoting even bigger boxing matches on Paramount because they (along with Qatar and the UAE) own a big chunk of the combined Paramount-WBD.
I will gladly concede these points.
Sharon Waxman, a veteran Hollywood media writer, argued in The New York Times that the key to getting the Paramount-WBD merger passed is transferring CNN over to someone else. She argues that Barry Diller is interested in acquiring CNN alongside former CNN head Jeff Zucker. What’s the conflict?
It was Jeff Zucker who gave President Trump unlimited oxygen during the 2016 US presidential primary & general election cycles, airing over two dozen of his rallies in full while airing literally zero Bernie Sanders rallies — despite Sanders consistently drawing much bigger crowds.
Jeff Zucker is CEO of RedBird IMI, a joint venture created by Gerry Cardinale's RedBird Capital Partners and Abu Dhabi-backed International Media Investments (IMI).
Gerry Cardinale has emerged as one of Ari Emanuel's most significant financial partners through RedBird Capital, alongside long-time financial backers including Silver Lake.
Gerry Cardinale joined Paramount's board as part of the Skydance-Paramount transaction, reflecting RedBird Capital's central financing and ownership role in the merger.
It’s all one big circle.
Paramount seems well aware of this narrative, with one lawyer close to its side telling me about the state attorneys general: “They don’t want Ellison to control CNN, period. But they can’t say that. That would be a violation of the First Amendment.” (All 12 of the attorneys general are Democrats.)
Paramount’s chief legal counsel, Makan Delrahim, ran the antitrust division of the Justice Department in the first Trump administration. Both publicly and privately he has been confidently asserting that based on the law the merger was not in question.
The merger opposition is being spearheaded by Norm Eisen, a former Obama ambassador and a leading legal strategist during the 2019 Trump impeachment. He is a founder of the group Democracy Defenders Fund, which is helping to lead the fight against the merger.
Here’s the problem with Waxman’s thinking: given the heavy political nature of the Larry Ellison & Donald Trump relationship, it is very clear — as outlined in numerous media reports and in a recent Delaware shareholder derivative lawsuit against Paramount — that influence over CNN is a big deal to The Donald.
Remember how we spent many years declaring TKO a government contractor and political mercenary? We weren’t lying to you. We just didn’t know how spot on we truly were or that there would be hundreds of billions of dollars in transactions between TKO and various governments and government-backed entities.
There are billions at stake in monopolizing boxing
Which brings us to the rather curious — and transparently desperate — attempt to revitalize public discussion of TKO’s Ali Revival Act.
The act would essentially give TKO a pass to ignore the original Muhammad Ali Act that gave boxers many rights not enjoyed by MMA fighters or pro-wrestlers — including sunset provisions on contracts and firm separation of managers, promoters and sanctioning bodies
If TKO gets this legislation passed (as-is), the gravity of the legislation will force the other boxing promoters into TKO’s new UBO system.
The clock is ticking on the Senate calendar for anything to get passed in this current legislative session. August recess is arriving. Old parliamentarian war horse Mitch McConnell may be even be dead. Who knows.
September usually is a time to hurriedly pass budget bills. Then it’s Midterm election season. Then comes the Lame Duck session. Before you know it, a new Senate and House will be here.
Which is why I found it extremely interesting that Nick Khan would get up to his old tricks by trying to breathe oxygen into what looked like a very sclerotic and quiet Senate calendar featuring a supposedly stalled-out Ali Revival Act.
Enter Nico Ali Walsh, the face of opposition for the Ali Revival Act in Senate testimony. His manager/handler is Amer Abdallah, who was previously photographed with Daniel Kinahan and Dan Bilzerian. What a combination. (Abdallah publicly disavowed Kinahan after US sanctions were implemented.)
Nico, who voiced public opposition to the Ali Revival Act, suddenly announced last week that he was going to visit Nick Khan at the Zuffa Boxing 09 event at The Felt Forum (MSG). Why would someone opposed to the Ali Revival Act suddenly be eager to discuss the bill in multiple public forums?
Right on cue, Nico and Amer Abdallah met with Nick Khan in Manhattan.
A heavily prepared and coached Joe Tessitore then “interviewed” Nico Ali Walsh on the Paramount broadcast of Zuffa Boxing 09. It was a useless encounter for both men.
Then Nico and Amer did the social media circuit, including an interview with Sean Zittel and… an interview with former Nick Khan client and current Nick Khan guy, Ariel Helwani. Of course.
In the Helwani interview, Nico Ali Walsh claimed that individuals connected to the Senate told him that the Ali Revival Act in its current form would not pass. He then proceeded to give suggestions as to how to amend the Revival Act.
Why would someone opposed to the bill be providing suggestions for how to get it passed? What is Nico Ali Walsh’s agenda here? He repeatedly insisted, “I’m just here to support the fighters.”
If that’s the case, why lobby to change the most pro-fighter legislation ever passed — legislation crafted and lobbied for by his legendary grandfather?
Suffice to say, the limited oxygen that Nico Ali Walsh has contributed to the conversation has not exactly been persuasive to fight fans. Tim Bradley trashed it.
Why would Nick Khan and Harrison Whitman be so transparent in their tactics and procedural mechanics? It is all very, very bizarre. I can guarantee one thing: if this was Frank or Lorenzo Fertitta, they would have never let Nico Ali Walsh on their broadcast without a transaction being finalized and his messaging being on point to support their agenda.
Instead, chalk it up to another insidious but goofy attempt to get the Ali Revival Act endorsed. Just like Khan and Whitman did with Mike McAtee of USA Boxing until he got his hand caught in the cookie jar and the Board of Directors stepped in. Tyson Lee and Hector Colon ended up exiting the scene, whatever their motivation and reasons may have been.
Bottom line? These billionaires at TKO never stop. They never stop trying to destroy the competition. They never stop obsessing over their next scheme. They — and their voluminous amount of Personal Assistants — never sleep. Empire builders and destroyers know nothing else. These political and financial mercenaries will stop at no cost to consolidate, swallow, and concentrate all of their media, financial, and legal firepower so they can conquer every single aspect of your personal and private life.
What a devil’s bargain.
Zach Arnold is lead opinion writer for The MMA Draw on Substack. His archives can be read at FightOpinion.com. Contact Zach: fightopinion at protonmail dot com.
Right on cue, TKO leaks to ESPN on Thursday morning that the Senate amended version of the Ali Revival Act will be unveiled in a mark-up session after the August recess period.
https://www.espn.com/boxing/story/_/id/49487683/ali-act-introduced-senate-addresses-contract-lengths-titles
This is just phenomenal journalism; I don’t even follow mma and this was so compelling and well laid out