2026 is shaping up to be a costly year for both Golden Boy & Matchroom Boxing. If it’s not talent poaching by TKO, it’s going to be escalating costs keeping current talent in a war of matching offers by Zuffa Boxing’s Nick Khan and Harrison Whitman.
Meanwhile, Dana White is back with glee enjoying his role as court jester and rodeo clown. Like US President Donald Trump, Dana White loves the smell of weakness in his rivals. Mr. White smells blood in the water with Eddie Hearn.
It appears that the current players in the boxing world paid little or no attention to the trials and tribulations of UFC antitrust litigation over the past decade.
It doesn’t even appear that Oscar De La Hoya or Eddie Hearn fully understand the nature of the rival they are facing.
That’s the big theme for this week’s edition of The MMA Draw podcast. Our recent high-stakes boxing business coverage has won us some new subscribers and lurkers, so we welcome everyone to join our campaign of covering crazy billionaires in fight sport.
Nate & Zach are back with three big topics for discussion. The free portion of this week’s podcast analyzes the current state of affairs in boxing and how TKO is playing an arbitrage game to maximize psychological pain on their enemies. Rule number one about monopolies: they’re just as happy creating new barriers to entry and destroying the competition as they are about growing the size of an audience. Whatever the size of the pie, TKO will find a way to value extract billions of dollars. There are a lot of lessons our friends in boxing can learn from their MMA counterparts.
The paid portion of this week’s podcast takes a closer look at Mark Shapiro’s fingerprints on both UFC & WWE 2026 matchmaking. Yes, we said matchmaking. It was Endeavor-friendly writer Joe Flint in the Wall Street Journal who reported that Mark Shapiro would be in charge of “freshening up” UFC & WWE. His definition of freshening up is a lot different than our definition.
Four shows into the UFC experiment on Paramount Plus, and Zach is getting ready to throw in the towel. TKO’s business model of convincing all of us to pay for 95% filler in order to get 5% viral moment highlights is out of control.
TKO is aware that they have a problem regarding declining interest in UFC & WWE products. However, reports about blackout policies for both Elimination Chamber and Wrestlemania PLE events signal some trouble ahead. Last year’s Wrestlemania event drew a reported $66 million. The pressure is on Spreadsheet Shapiro to constantly make the number go up.
So many long-time UFC fans are starting to tune out, which creates a perfect opportunity for Netflix to capitalize on a nostalgia fight with big star power like Ronda Rousey vs. Gina Carano. Our podcast this week expands upon Nate’s recent article about the upcoming Netflix mega-fight and why it’s going to draw a completely different audience than today’s current UFC fan base.
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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.
