The week TKO arsonists set UFC & WWE fans on fire
Pat McAfee. Donald Trump. Laura Sanko. Dana White & Nina Drama. It never ends.
“It’s an eat-what-you-kill world, right? People have to deliver. Now, they need to know the expectations. They need clear feedback. They need performance reviews. They need resources and tools, right? They need help getting there. But as long as everyone understands upfront what we’re aiming for, what the measure and metrics of success are, then it’s full throttle to get there. And if you get there, everyone wins.” - Mark Shapiro
I have one hell of a performance review for Mark Shapiro.
I hate being right about the fight business because usually what I’m right about means a negative outcome is developing.
Welcome to TKO Takeover Wrestlemania Week in Las Vegas. The week where Mark Shapiro brings value extraction to a whole new level in the desert. Remember when Cody Rhodes and Randy Orton were supposed to be the main attractions at Allegiant Stadium?
TKO management has a whole different concept on who the real action stars are in 2026.
Who are the biggest stars in TKO?
The C-Suite see themselves as the biggest stars in TKO. Ari Emanuel. Mark Shapiro. Nick Khan. Lee Fitting. Triple H. Hunter Campbell. Advertising ace Grant Norris-Jones. Seth Krauss. Andrew Schleimer. Lawrence Epstein.
The Kings of Hollywood and finance view their corporate system as larger than life. Ari Gold with a dose of Jack Welch-ism.
Process over substance. Process is substance in their world.
Controlling the plumbing of how things work. Creating massive conflicts of interest everywhere and compromising the competition. Tying others into knots, creating psychological moats. Invading current institutions, ripping them apart with internal strife, and then taking over. Whether it’s celebrity worship or fear, there are lots of tools at TKO’s disposal. Just look at what is happening with USA Boxing right now with Mike McAtee, Tyson Lee, and Héctor Colón.
Fight fans are coming to the realization that they are no longer the primary customer. TKO is giving fans a take-it-or-leave-it ultimatum. Management doesn’t mind cycling out UFC fans every five years. The longer fans stick around, the smarter they are about fight history and the more educated they are in sniffing out product devolution. Push these fans out pronto.
Even when TKO is feeling desperate because their vaunted value extraction at Wrestlemania isn’t massive enough, Ari Emanuel’s newest client, Pat McAfee, still has time on Smackdown to take a shot at “needy families” (translation: the poors) who can’t pay astronomical prices to go to Las Vegas. Wrapped in that veiled shot at the fans was a Grant Norris-Jones BRAND ACTIVATION for RAM Trucks.
The same advertising aces that decided this was a good time to push a nicotine pouch sponsorship between TKO properties and FRE.
The terminally online male audience that watches Tucker Carlson and John Middlekauff knows all about nicotine pouch brands like Philip Morris-owned Zyn. So that’s the latest sponsorship target for TKO.
Warren Hayes at Voices of Wrestling recently articulated an important point about Mark Shapiro’s inflationary bomb on WWE ticket prices. It’s not a conspiracy to say that TKO wants to replace the demographic of older wrestling fans with newer, freshly minted customers who don’t know what the “good old days” were like. Which makes the Pat McAfee “saving the business” shtick even funnier with its bitter irony because it’s a pathetic last-minute plea from TKO leadership for Attitude Era fans to come back. Talk about an abusive customer relationship.
The root cause of angry fans in 2026 can be traced back to an infamous Christmas 2023 TKO call with Mark Shapiro. The TKO COO told everyone exactly what was going to happen. No more C-level markets. Massive pay-for-play government contracts Financial Incentive Packages. Endeavor’s version of IBM Watson and AI was going to take over production. Cost savings. Value extraction. Synergies.
I only wish more people had read our December 2023 article. It’s not too late!
Ari Emanuel & Mark Shapiro are not fight people. They view the Octagon and the ring as movie sets. They get the extra benefit of talent not being unionized and having SAG-AFTRA cards.
The quality of fights in UFC is no longer consistent. The creative quality of WWE programming is as desirable as an STD. AAA is an absolute circus. So what gives?
It’s not just the fact that TKO has locked in enormous step-ladder year-to-year guarantees for media rights. It’s not just their aggressive financial accounting practices. It’s TKO’s one-on-one brainwashing in the biggest business settings with the most powerful leaders on planet Earth.
Ari Emanuel can’t win a public debate, but he sure as hell can influence a powerful person behind closed doors. We recently saw this in action when US House leadership rolled over like a dog showing its belly in passing the Muhammad Ali American Boxing Revival Act.
Mark Shapiro has convinced the richest media executives in the world that UFC & WWE over-perform and deliver results that no one else of their size and stature can match. Even though previous TKO partners don’t seem all too happy with past results, like Fox Sports with UFC & WWE. Like ESPN with UFC.
But it doesn’t matter because media executives come and go. There’s always a fresh-faced mark to work over. This same principle applies in how TKO management views UFC & WWE fans.
Average ratings? It’s about reach, not ratings. Attention economy! Virality! Water cooler talk!
Mark Shapiro and Ari Emanuel redefine metrics on the fly. TKO convinces decision makers in media and Wall Street that they know something that you don’t know.
Again, the illusion of access. The illusion of perceived access.
Don’t expect fan protests, but do expect quiet strikes
This is why TKO is so unnerved by not having automatic sell-outs for Wrestlemania 42 in Las Vegas. As we recently discussed on our brand new MMA Draw podcast, empty seats are visual devastation for TKO’s bubble of invincibility. Empty seats mean the mirage of insatiable customer appetite isn’t real. Once that bubble bursts, the stench of management malarkey magnifies in malodorous whiffs.
We see this playing out right now for UFC in repeat markets.
The biggest story for UFC & WWE business in 2026 is year-over-year declines in repeat markets. Perth, Australia. Mexico City. Miami. Las Vegas.
The numbers from UFC 327 tell the story.
We’ve gone from $12M to $14M to $11M to $7M at the gate for four Miami events.
Under normal circumstances, these would be fantastic numbers for a fight promoter.
But Mark Shapiro is not a fight promoter. Mark Shapiro is constantly selling Wall Street investors on increasing EBITDA, Free Cash Flow, and growth properties (via Zuffa Boxing thanks to the impending Ali Revival Act with UBOs).
Mark Shapiro’s message to investors and financial institutions is this: You can have it all and not pay a premium for it.
This is why the $15M Conor Benn signing proved to be such a huge public relations mistake for TKO. Even with Turki Alalshikh paying the bill, the $15M price tag became a very large albatross around Mark Shapiro’s neck.
The margins have to match Mark Shapiro’s increasingly greedy gambles. You can massage and step-ladder media rights and advertising revenue into whatever financial story you want. What you can’t undo are visuals of empty seats. But I'm sure TKO will be more than happy to use their new AI video campaigns to try to erase that problem.
UFC & WWE fans in repeat markets are sending a message: they can’t afford to buy the dog food, and they don’t like how it tastes.
Understanding the scope of this TKO management mindset gives a better understanding of the completely incomprehensible Jerry Springer-level behavior from the UFC & WWE front offices these days. What we saw this past week alone was enough to make you gag.
Dana White & Nina Drama on the Adin Ross Kick stream. Showing bare feet. Talking about paying off a $500,000 gambling debt. Complaining about online critics who just don’t know the business.
The Josh Hokit whateverthatis public display. It’s as if he’s taken the Eugene character from WWE and decided to have Eugene impersonate Chael Sonnen, John Cena (Thuganomics) and Steve Austin with raps and middle fingers. LOOK AT THE ATTENTION HE GETS. He’s in your head! As appealing as rubbernecking past a car crash scene or watching a motorcyclist get decapitated in a police chase.
The continued on-camera Frat Boy humiliation kinking with Laura Sanko and Daniel Cormier. TKO is really convinced that Cormier is their version of Charles Barkley. Who is the audience for this? The UFC front office, that’s who.
The return of US President Donald J. Trump to the Octagon. In Miami, which is perceived to be favorable political turf for the 45th and 47th President. The man needed an ego boost after all his favorite media allies (like Tucker Carlson) turned on him over the US war with Iran. Trump wanted affirmation and votes of confidence from the 18-to-35-year-olds listening to Theo Von, Dave Smith, and Joe Rogan. Affirmation that Trump is still loved, on a media platform (Paramount) that is most closely associated with this current White House. Instead of a celebration, Trump received a muted but respectful reaction from the UFC 327 crowd while his Vice President wasn’t able to sign a deal in Islamabad with Iranian leadership. Although based on the torrent of negative comments on this UFC Instagram post about Trump’s walkout with Dana White at UFC 327, both TKO & the Trump White House do not entirely have their finger on the pulse of current fan sentiment.
The invasion of Pat McAfee, Ari Emanuel’s newest client, on SmackDown. A 20-year storyline between Cody Rhodes & Randy Orton wasn’t selling enough four-figure Wrestlemania tickets, so the Kings of Hollywood decided to hot swap celebrity names into the mix because that’s what Hollywood does. Take a backseat, Randy.
The Pat McAfee booking is the most revealing development regarding how Ari Emanuel and Mark Shapiro perceive WWE customers. No, not the fans — but the media executives. Ted Sarandos. Bela Bajaria. Burke Magnus. Jimmy Pitaro.
James Romero has an excellent video on the stupidity of this strategy.
Earlier in this article, I proclaimed that the Kings of Hollywood view the Octagon and WWE ring as movie sets. Fans are paying extraordinarily high prices for the right to be witnesses to a live-action scripted movie.
When that movie starts bombing, the instinct of management is self-preservation. The instinct of management is to insert or replace the actors “performers” with celebrities or famous athletes. Travis Scott. Jelly Roll. Lil Yachty. Tyrese Halliburton. Bad Bunny. Sexyy Red on NXT.
In a 2025 media interview, Mark Shapiro revealed TKO’s psychology on matchmaking during an interview in which he was bragging about WWE’s record-breaking metrics.
“When you’re marketing all day that you’ve got a new movie coming out (with) Brad Pitt and George Clooney, neither one of which we represent, that means something. You’re going to get sampling. Now, if it ends up being a good movie, that depends on the package, the writer, the timing, the lead-in, the campaign, the storytelling itself, the director, you name it. But a good start is having names that matter and draw people to the screen because so much of what we do is really about sampling, right? That’s part of the strategy with Netflix.”
The keyword is sampling.
Sampling is getting people to watch your product at least one time. Newbies. Use big, recognizable names as attention magnets due to the curiosity factor. The act of attracting viewers so they try watching highlights for the first time, regardless of whether viewers become long-term fans.
Algorithms on Netflix and YouTube reward celebrity sampling because it draws early engagement, creating a feedback loop. It’s why TKO is attached to iShowSpeed.
The addiction to celebrities perversely means there’s less incentive for Ari & Mark to actually develop homegrown stars. If they do develop homegrown WWE & UFC talent, it needs to be on favorably restrictive financial and creative terms.
If you need true star power, borrow it from outside the business.
UFC and WWE fans in 2026 are starting to spot this pattern. Customer satisfaction is cratering and it’s causing an uncomfortable bout of cognitive dissonance for ownership. Management is mocking the “Internet Wrestling Community” as stupid while also resenting the fact that not enough customers are rich or gullible enough in 2026 to take out a second mortgage for a cheap seat in Mark Shapiro’s so-called “Experience Economy.”
Soaking 80,000 fans in Las Vegas over two nights for tens of millions of dollars isn’t good enough. Hence the projection about the poors or “needy families.”
This internal conflict is what you’re seeing percolating behind the scenes between the MMA and pro-wrestling lifers versus the outsiders from Hollywood. Management is trapped in pushing process and palace intrigue as a coping mechanism disguised as a media and business strategy (see: WWE Unreal). The Hollywood playbook. If it worked with Entertainment Tonight and Access Hollywood, it should work for TKO. Right?
This is the real reason TKO is thrilled to be out of the PPV business. They are no longer interested in selling fights. One could argue that their UFC & WWE front offices were incapable of selling PPVs consistently. This psychology of fight promoting, and how PPV was a key anchor to building up mega-fights, has been the mother’s milk for generations of matchmaking.
That is all out the window now. Take-it-or-leave-it. If you’re an ungrateful poor that’s part of the “needy families” that can’t pay to take your kid to Wrestlemania, it’s your fault.
As Nate Wilcox recently wrote, TKO has moved beyond the UFC & WWE. Management wants you to keep paying up in the short-term so that new revenue can be diverted into ventures like art, golf, tennis, racing, the NFL, the NBA, and other media entities.
TKO invaded The Masters golf tournament with The Miz, and the fan reaction went exactly the way you thought it would.
Fans are no longer the primary audience. What are you going to do about it?
Zach Arnold is the lead opinion writer for The MMA Draw Newsletter on Substack. You can e-mail him at fightopinion - at - protonmail dot com.
They can AI away empty seats all they want, but I'm willing to bet that the people that do still attend are going to be posting pics and video that'll clash with their narrative. That kind of contrast is only going to make fans grumbling snowball into the general public catching on because who doesn't love a story about the rich and powerful face-planting?
Stark reality rundown. We all know the brains of the operation left with the sale in 2016. Paramount does have that 60 minute no filler fight recap, every fight, after the event. My savior.