UFC was warned and did nothing about Dulgarian
Big red flags raised in UFC gambling scandal. Can you trust APEX fights?
If you were looking for solid crisis leadership from Mark Shapiro over UFC’s gambling investigation involving Isaac Dulgarian, you made a bad bet.
Here’s what I know: I’ve seen zero direct evidence of criminality by UFC management in regards to fixing or betting on fights.
Here’s what I also know: the factual assertions and affirmative defenses raised by UFC publicly, on-the-record, are bowling shoe ugly.
On Wednesday’s TKO conference call for Q3 2025 earnings, it was business as usual for management. As warm and fuzzy as a funeral home director but only spouting MBA buzzwords instead of eulogies. They certainly love the words EBITDA, margin, and accretive.
If TKO management is worried about any sort of UFC gambling scandal, they’re not letting on about it.
The problem is that TKO’s public strategy of sending Dana White to talk to his favorite media hot spots, TMZ and Jim Rome, hasn’t killed interest in this story.
Instead, Dana’s comments have raised some serious eyebrows — for those paying attention. And leave it to Mark Shapiro to proclaim gambling talk on ESPN to be a form of heresy, literally a year after his CNBC interview, salivating at all the gambling opportunities presented by UFC programming.
This is a real test of crisis management for TKO leadership, and so far, it does not appear that there is a unified corporate response. Leaving Dana White to publicly address a scandal that increases risk exposure to names like Hunter Campbell and Marc Ratner is not necessarily a strategy I would engage in, especially when one of the affirmative defenses is: yeah, we were alerted something was up, but the fight happened anyway, and then we called the Feds.
You read that right. If your jaw hasn’t already dropped, wait until you hear some of the other wild, on-the-record, crazy claims being made about government and media oversight that would make any sane person turn their head and say, “Wait, what did they just say?”
In the wild media frenzy chasing headlines on the Isaac Dulgarian story, some major accusations have been overlooked. Accusations that paint an incredibly damaging picture of sketchy negligence deserving of your attention, especially if you bet money on UFC fights.