When Nate Wilcox published his analysis last week at The MMA Draw on why Jake Paul vs. Anthony Joshua was a done deal, he nailed the angle on the story.
What Turki Alalshikh wants, Turki gets.
Turki has been telegraphing his desire to see “Jack Paul” get crushed by Anthony Joshua — for months. Now the fight is happening on Netflix. Turki wants to kill “celebrity boxing” and take control of his vision of what this real sport should look like in 2026.
The method of delivery was the real story behind this major fight announcement. Turki Alalshikh’s gamble on making Ring Magazine the media machine and house organ of boxing for global information dissemination paid off. Mike Coppinger and Rick Reeno are large and in charge of Turki’s combat sports campaign.
This week’s edition of The MMA Draw podcast takes a closer look at how Turki Alalshikh maneuvered the pieces on the proverbial chess board to get exactly the result he wanted to see. If you are in fight sport or want to learn more about how power is really flexed in this business, you’ve come to the right place.
But Turki wasn’t the only kingmaker flexing his raw political and business leverage this past weekend.
For our paid subscribers, our newest podcast discusses the increasingly high-profile nature of Ali Abdelaziz’s demonstration of raw power in the face of an ever-shrinking UFC brand ambassador Dana White.
Whether it’s influencing top UFC matchmaking, recruiting new talent, or simply dominating the turf battle at Madison Square Garden, UFC management continues to stand down to Ali Abdelaziz. They are not publicly challenging Ali’s authority or questioning his public claims of just how much political power he truly possesses. UFC management is not rebuking Ali for his recent Twitter comments about the MSG floor brawl attack on Dillon Danis.
Why is UFC management playing along? Does it have anything to do with the current ongoing antitrust litigation battle in Judge Richard Boulware’s courtroom regarding the plaintiffs wanting to obtain information on UFC’s ongoing business practices via discovery battles?
We close out this week’s podcast focusing on TKO’s very cold calculation about the US economy in 2026 and how they are positioning their UFC & WWE properties. Call it The Poors for Paramount marketing strategy.
“That is why the UFC has strategically made itself a product for the rich and connected and private equity because they’re hoping that this [business] model they’ve got of The Poor’s watching on Paramount but the rich watching live is going to help them ride any sort of recessionary or [depression] wave, whether it’s inflation or deflation. That’s the calculation. That’s the social gap, the wealth gap widening. And that’s the direction that we are looking at in 2026. Let’s see if the gamble pays off.”
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Nate Wilcox is Editor-in-Chief of The MMA Draw. He founded BloodyElbow.com in 2007 and sold it in 2024.
Zach Arnold is a lead opinion writer for The MMA Draw on Substack. His archives can be read at FightOpinion.com.
