You watch UFC & WWE for the fights. The powers-that-be are watching you and calculating how much data they can extract from your viewing habits. Your age, politics, what you buy, and how to manipulate your world view.
This is not the kind of podcast we expected to be doing this week for The MMA Draw but you really need to hear what we have to say.
This week’s podcast will change your outlook on what UFC & WWE means to world leaders in 2025. The days of being a good old fashioned fight fan are over.
Now we are a crazy road of world governments as fight co-promoters, building massive psychological profiles of customers in the name of control. But what exactly is the point of this lust to feed the AI beasts? Why would anyone think that data mining UFC customers is a useful exercise in building a digital ID platform?
Why would Larry & David Ellison of Oracle spend billions on Paramount? Why $7.7B to buy UFC media rights plus more for the Zuffa Boxing media rights? For the same reason, global powers raced to buy TikTok and take Electronic Arts private. It’s all about capturing the hearts and minds of males aged 18 to 34 and value extracting this demographic hard.
How did UFC end up from a cage-fighting circus to a globally desired political mercenary?
Study all the major players involved in current multi-billion-dollar business deals. There is connective tissue among the powers-that-be.
We highly recommend reading two significant articles profiling the rise of the United Arab Emirates vis-à-vis American business and politics. First, this 2021 New Yorker profile on Ari Emanuel and how a powerful UFC-linked attorney (Marty Edelman) changed Endeavor’s fortunes. Second, this September 2025 New York Times article highlighting Marty Edelman’s relationship with President Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff. It really is a small world.
(Karim Zidan published a December 2023 podcast covering the UAE’s history with UFC. Marty Edelman is general counsel for G42, the UAE’s top AI shop.)
This week’s MMA Draw podcast will have you asking a million different questions that you never previously considered.
You can check out The MMA Draw Podcast on Substack via the following feeds:
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.
