California rushing to endorse Muhammad Ali American Boxing Revival Act
Despite overwhelmingly negative reactions, Andy Foster is ready to lobby.
Despite zero on-the-record demonstrated public support from fans or fighters, the California State Athletic Commission is poised next week — in an urgent meeting — to formally endorse TKO’s proposed changes to the Ali Act. Wednesday, October 15th, at 10 AM to be exact.
The Muhammad Ali American Boxing Revival Act in the US House of Representatives just gained several co-sponsors in the last week. A key endorser? Nevada Democrat Steven Horsford. Here’s the updated list of co-sponsors:
One month ago, California’s commission held a public hearing on the Ali Revival Act. Instead of an automatic endorsement by the state of California, the voluminous amount of public backlash towards the Federal legislation resulted in CSAC floating the idea of creating a subcommittee to further investigate the impact of legislation strongly endorsed by Executive Officer Andy Foster and PBC promoter Tom Brown.
What happened to the concept of creating a subcommittee to “study” the impact of the Ali Revival Act?
Since last September’s commission meeting in California, two significant milestones have been accomplished by TKO. First, TKO & SELA promoted the Canelo Alvarez-Terence Crawford fight on Netflix. Second, Paramount signed a five-year media rights deal with Zuffa Boxing.
It is the Paramount deal that has a significant political impact on Congress amending the Ali Act because of who owns the network — Larry & David Ellison. As highlighted in our most recent MMA Draw podcast, the political & business influence of Larry Ellison is nearly unmatched in America.
Do not expect much, if any, organized political resistance from this version of the US Congress against the Ali Revival Act.
One can plausibly hypothesize that California was supposed to endorse the Ali Revival Act in September but was not prepared for the negative public reaction. Once Netflix aired Canelo-Drawford and Paramount signed Zuffa Boxing, the political direction became a fait accompli. Now it’s time to damn the torpedoes and go full steam ahead on endorsing the Federal boxing legislation.
As Andy Foster highlighted at September’s CSAC meeting, TKO provides significant event business — through MMA and pro-wrestling — for California. Mr. Foster wants first crack at a major Zuffa Boxing event. Endorsing TKO’s Ali Revival Act is a pathway to accomplish that goal.
The most important thing, in the eyes of Mr. Foster, is producing a tangible political result. That also means navigating everyone towards a unified message. A month ago, that was not necessarily the case.
Tom Brown’s not-so-secret letter to Congress
Andy Foster delivered a surprise to the public watching last September’s CSAC meeting: PBC promoter Tom Brown had endorsed the Ali Revival Act.
Tom Brown’s letter wasn’t in September’s meeting materials.
Naturally, John Nash of Hey Not The Face made a public records request for that letter. And he got that letter. The letter raised some significant issues.
First, the letter was unsigned and dated November 5, 2025. How would Tom Brown know that a US House Congressional committee would be holding a hearing for the Ali Revival Act?
Second, the letter is addressed to the Committee on Education and Workforce. How would Tom Brown know that this specific committee would be holding the public hearing?
Did someone give Tom Brown this key and specific information for Mr. Brown to produce this endorsement letter? Who provided Mr. Brown with such guidance? Andy Foster? Ike Epstein at UFC? A lobbyist at TKO?
Third, did Tom Brown anticipate his letter to Congress being publicly revealed before a tentatively scheduled November 2025 hearing? Boxing writer and reporter Dan Rafael posted in late September on Twitter that Tom Brown liked some parts of the Ali Revival Act:
Tom Brown’s endorsement of the Ali Revival Act in his letter to the US Congress was clear and unambiguous. What changed?
One can hypothesize that perhaps what changed was an early and unanticipated disclosure by Andy Foster regarding Mr. Brown’s endorsement letter.
Now the race is on for TKO to lobby various major state athletic commissions, such as California, to publicly support the Ali Revival Act to build momentum for Congress passing their bill.
Despite zero on-the-record support from fight fans, boxers, or other combat sports athletes, California is preparing to endorse legislation that largely benefits one multi-monopoly that will utilize its pricing, political, and global power to dramatically change the financial fortunes of boxers for better and for worse.
Zach Arnold is the lead opinion writer for The MMA Draw Newsletter on Substack. You can e-mail him at fightopinion - at - protonmail dot com.