The End of Promoters? Sports Innovation in the Age of Cowardice

Combat Sports Was Forged by Risk-Takers. Now It’s Run by Risk Managers.

“The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

We’re not living through the golden age of combat sports. We’re living through its gentrification.

The bold have been pushed out for the bankable. Risk-takers replaced by suits fluent in brand decks and buzzwords. And no matter how polished the rollout, the core truth is this: the soul of the sport is circling the drain.

The Real Question

Are actual sports promoters dead?

Not the ones doing interviews or posting on LinkedIn. The real ones. The ones who risked it all. Who lost everything trying to change the game. Who didn’t need a VC round to justify creating chaos.

The new class? They wouldn’t start a bar fight unless the board signed off on it.

The American Dream was built on risk… it was never meant to be about risk aversion and branding.

The real American Dream was messy. It was built on chaos, reinvention, and unfiltered ambition. Now it’s been shrink-wrapped into merchandise. Something you sell, not something you chase.

And sports got infected too.

People used to chase legacy. Now they chase money and leverage. Everyone wants to be safe. Nobody wants to be remembered. They say they’re innovating, but every move screams: don’t take chances.

“The business of America is business.”

— Calvin Coolidge

That might’ve been the problem all along.

TKO’s Goliath Monopoly Grip

The UFC-WWE merger that formed TKO wasn’t a bold creative leap. It was a calculated power play, driven more by greed than vision. Eliminate challengers. Control the rights. Lock down the talent. Smother the market.

On a deeper and more personal level, it also accelerated Vince McMahon’s return to power in WWE. Instead of waiting out the noise and reemerging on a longer timeline, the merger gave him a fast lane back. One that bypassed resistance and compressed what should have been a two to three year return into a matter of months.

They didn’t rise by building the best product. They rose by making sure no one else had a chance. This was never about innovation. It was always about consolidation. Not to grow the sport, but to control it. A monopoly throwing its weight around to make sure it never had to compete again.

And here’s the truth: when you kill competition, you kill greatness.

“Monopoly is business at the end of its journey.”

— Henry Demarest Lloyd

The worst part? How normal it’s become. Fans go along with it. Sponsors feed it. Media calls it brilliant. And in that fog of applause, the American Dream gets gutted, rebranded, and sold back as “brand synergy.”

The ONE Mirage

Chatri Sityodtong has long pitched ONE Championship as Asia’s martial-arts answer to the UFC: rooted in honor, scaled like a startup. But as previously reported in The MMA Draw, the U.S. expansion didn’t just stall. It imploded.

U.S. events were scrapped. Layoffs hit quietly behind the scenes. The numbers are staggering: over $90 million lost in 2023 alone, with more than $530 million in total losses over the years. That never translates to forward momentum. That’s a promotion bleeding out.

I laid it out in plain terms: the employee restructuring, the disappearing fight schedule, the failed follow-up after Denver. It wasn’t a foothold in the U.S, rather a one-off event with no infrastructure behind it.

Meanwhile, top athletes like Reinier de Ridder (now with the UFC) and Dmitry Menshikov have gone public about inactivity and contract limbo. Fighters are signing bout agreements for matchups that never happen. The roster is stalling out.

Yes, ONE still “commands” respect across Southeast Asia. But it isn’t global growth. It’s damage control, repackaged in glossy language for sponsors and investors.

Chatri speaks in parables about the warrior spirit. But in this game, mythology doesn’t build institutions. Execution does. And right now, ONE looks more like a vanity project running out of excuses than a disruptor with staying power.

The Donn Davis Magic Act… and the Last Card Up PFL’s Sleeve

There was a moment people thought PFL had it. Brackets, smart packaging, international ambitions. But under the hood? It was smoke and mirrors. Burn rate was high, equity was being tossed around like candy, inability to sustain a competitive roster, and the playbook started to look desperate.

Then came John Martin.

He’s not a hype man. He’s not a placeholder. He’s the former Turner CEO who ran a $13 billion portfolio and worked with the UFC to get them on the map. The guy has been sold to us as the media executive who knows how to scale real sports media, and he’s not walking into the job to collect a check.

Martin brings something PFL’s never had: authority with a track record. The kind of leadership that doesn’t throw ideas at the wall and fall off. The kind that makes them stick. And he’s coming in at a crucial media rights renewal window for PFL.

If anyone can possibly fix the PFL mess before it has its Titanic moment, it just might be him.

Dave Feldman and the Bare-Knuckle Hail Mary

Dave Feldman launched BKFC in 2018 to widespread doubt. Too violent, too raw, too unstable. But seven years later, it’s licensed in California and Nevada, runs shows across the U.S., UK, and Thailand, and has pulled in names like Yoel Romero, Thiago Santos, and Ben Rothwell.

Then came the deal that changed everything. Conor McGregor joined as an equity partner. Not a guest spot. Not a gimmick. Real ownership. Feldman offered what the UFC never would, and McGregor said yes.

Now Feldman is pushing harder. He announced a $25 million World’s Baddest Man tournament with 32 fighters and a $15 million prize. He teased a Fedor fight. He rolled out an equity program for champions. He’s expanding into Dubai, Australia, Salt Lake City, and more.

It’s bold, it’s risky, but it’s starting to show signs of heavy stress. Seven-figure fighter contracts, nonstop events, and rapid expansion are testing the limits. Some undercards lack structure. Logistics are stretched. One misstep and the whole thing could crack.

Still, Feldman doesn’t play it safe. He throws Hail Marys.

And sometimes, those get answered.

I’m not overly optimistic. But I’ve seen crazier passes land.

The So-Called ‘Stabilizers’

Dana White is still the figurehead, but he’s no longer the beating heart of the UFC. He plays the role: press conferences, soundbites, face-offs, but the real decisions flow through Hunter Campbell. Campbell’s not a showman. He’s the suit in the shadows. Efficient, controlled, and entirely variable. He knows how to maintain the machine, but he’s not in the business of building new ones. He doesn’t bet big. He mitigates.

That’s not a knock on his intelligence. It’s a knock on his ambition. You don’t get revolutions by managing spreadsheets. You get them by flipping the table and going all in.

Scott Coker treated Bellator like a reliable regional chain. Think Applebee’s. Familiar, functional, but never great. He didn’t wreck the ship, but he never tried to leave the dock either. His biggest skill was keeping the promotion just interesting enough to avoid being irrelevant, but not daring enough to ever be essential.

Then there’s Darren Owen and the Global Fight League. It launched with big promises: a fighter draft, revenue sharing, healthcare, retirement benefits, and a star-studded roster featuring Woodley, Werdum, Pettis, VanZant, Gustafsson, and more. The debut event was set for May in Los Angeles with Faber vs. Barao and Pettis vs. Henderson headlining. But then the “main investor” pulled out, and everything collapsed. The June relaunch never happened. Fighters were left in the dark. Stuart Austin admitted he had no idea what was going on. Even VanZant walked. What started as a bold play for disruption has become another cautionary tale in this Wild West of an industry.

White, Coker, Campbell, Davis, Chatri, and Owen: they don’t threaten the status quo anymore. They preserve it. These aren’t disruptors. They’re caretakers in a sport that was never meant to be safe. In an industry built on fire, playing it safe is just another way of going extinct.

This Is What Extinction Looks Like

Great sports moments don’t come from comfort. They’re born from friction. From chaos. From people willing to throw a match on the floor just to see who runs.

What we have now is corporate wallpaper. Everything looks polished, measured, inoffensive. Safe. Sanitized. Soulless.

 • No real promoters

 • No tension

 • No risk

 • No weight

No one’s building with urgency. No one’s chasing legacy. They’re cashing checks, maximizing equity, waiting out the next rights cycle.

“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”

— Edmund Burke

And that’s where we are. A room full of promoters. All of them still. All of them quiet. No movement. No noise. Just the hum of a sport drifting into irrelevance.

Rebuild or Rot

Keeping the lights on isn’t enough. If you’re not building, you’re decaying. Slowly. Quietly. From the inside out.

The DNA of American sports wasn’t stitched together in conference rooms or investor decks. It came from volatility. From grit. From people who burned bridges just to light the path forward. Every great league, every legendary promoter, started with someone willing to bet everything and face the consequences later.

Now? Promoters don’t chase legacy. They chase liability clauses. They don’t fight for moments. They lawyer up and protect their brand and reputation. Half of them are more familiar with arbitration hearings than arena sellouts.

That’s where the rot starts. When people stop building and start hedging.

But maybe… just maybe… John Martin didn’t show up to patch holes. Maybe he’s here to tear it down and start fresh. If he lands the right media deal, restructures the bones of PFL, and restores credibility, this thing could be more than salvageable. It could be a blueprint. The kind the industry hasn’t seen since Zuffa was still clawing for airtime.

Because if nobody else steps up, we’re not heading toward collapse.

We’re already there. Just waiting for the smoke to clear.

The Dream That Got Gutted

The rise of TKO isn’t just a business story. It’s a cautionary tale. It’s what happens when control replaces creativity. When monopoly silences movement. When the American Dream stops being about risk and reinvention, and becomes a boardroom game for the already powerful.

Promoters used to be outlaws. Scrappy. Hungry. Broke. They built things because no one else would. They didn’t ask for permission. They earned their place by shaking the system.

Today, those systems are locked tight. Controlled by executives in suits who never took a punch, never lost a dime chasing greatness, never built anything that wasn’t pre-approved. And they’re rewriting the rules to make sure no one else can.

It’s not just killing the fight game. It’s also been killing the myth we were sold about what made this country great. Why America was the land of the brave and the home of the free.

The American Dream wasn’t built for aristocrats with corporate shields and equity portfolios. It was built for the reckless believers who stormed into rooms they were never invited to. The ones who risked it all to build something new. It’s the reason the original pilgrims left Great Britain: sailing across uncharted waters to carve out a life of their own. Not for comfort. For freedom. To chase life, liberty, and, if it came to it, death on their own terms.

For a long time, combat sports carried that spirit. It was one of the last places where the dream still fought back.

Now? The doors are closing. The narratives are owned. The game is rigged. You don’t have to look at balance sheets to see it. You can feel it.

But maybe, in the cracks, there’s still room for something real. Maybe someone still knows how to throw the kind of punch that still matters.

I’m not holding my breath… but every now and then, even in a rigged game, a Hail Mary lands.

Follow me [@bobby_s_axelrod] on X and subscribe to The MMA Draw for combat sports intel, business crossovers, and breakdowns the mainstream won’t touch.

Blake Avignon is a pseudonym for a media and brand strategist working across sports, advertising, and entertainment with clients in the UFC, NBA, NFL, and F1.