TKO locks in Dana White as UFC brand ambassador for 5 more years
The Paramount Era is looking a whole lot like the ESPN+ Era.
Dana White, inconsistent and unfocused UFC Brand Ambassador, is back for five more years of corporate welfare. Ari Emanuel’s rodeo clown remains wildly successful in convincing the public that he’s still in charge and running day-to-day operations for the UFC.
Dana is more likely to be AWOL than on camera these days.
Why wasn’t Dana at the Ali Act hearings?
Notice how deadly quiet he was on the week that Zuffa Boxing made their Ali Reform Act invasion in Congress?
Nick Khan, Ike Epstein, Max Kellerman, Terence Crawford, and a cast of lobbyists played their roles brilliantly and completely boxed in the utterly unaware WBC boss Mauricio Sulaiman.
But who didn’t say a word until the adults in the room got the job done in the House hearing? Dana White.
Now Dana is clucking like a chicken, accusing those protesting TKO’s proposed Ali Act changes of being a bunch of loud hypocrites who will end up using TKO’s new UBO system to do business.
Remember, TKO’s Ali Reform Act is a waiver of current legal rights for fighters. It’s not an “option” as Dana, Khan, and Epstein continue to hammer with discipline in public.
And these same guys, who benefited greatly in building their UFC empire through regulatory capture (Unified Rules, cage, rounds), are now using brute force multi-monopoly process power to ram through a brand new UBO system that completely sidesteps the Ali Act.
Nick Khan was relentlessly on message (“modern business model will restore boxing,” “more protections for fighter health”) while doing the podcast rounds last week, leading into the hearing, and so were Ike Epstein, Andy Foster, Lonnie Ali, and most of the Congressional committee members.
But Dana White? When asked about the Act at the UFC 323 post-fight presser, our boy was anything but on message.
Now Dana White has something to say about the Ali Act
John Nash pointed out that “if promoters choose to go the route (UBOs) that makes them exempt from having to follow the Ali Act provisions, that would indicate the benefits in the Act were for the fighter and not the promoter.”
That is to say, Dana White went way off message and blurted out the truth about TKO’s drive to amend the Ali Act.
But that’s not the main thing.
The entire point of Dana White’s existence for Ari Emanuel is that he’s TKO’s rodeo clown. He’s there to distract fans, media, and investors from the realities of how TKO runs the UFC, just like a rodeo clown distracts the angry bull from the reality of who is really holding the reins.
Why is Dana sticking around?
Notorious UFC booster FrontRowBrian has his own theory as to why Dana White signed a five-year extension to do the bare minimum as a team player.
TL/DR: the institutional players financing TKO debt and stock want Dana White around as a key man to the public and thus five more years of Dana before UFC debt is refinanced again… and again… until they kick the can down the road well into their new $7.7B Paramount media rights deal.
Keeping the band together for the Paramount era
Those celebrating the brand new Paramount Era as a fresh change from the ESPN era might want to think again.
Glenn Jacobs and Matt Kenny, ESPN middle managers during their UFC tenure on ESPN+, have joined Team Paramount.
Joe Rogan isn’t going anywhere. Michael Bisping reportedly has signed a contract extension. The Ultimate Fighter and Dana White Contender Series are going to Paramount, along with Zuffa Boxing and whatever else TKO can load David Ellison’s new empire with. Perhaps Power Slap is next?
The new UFC is the same old UFC under TKO. Nothing is changing except for more value extraction and arbitrary fighter booking that puts the lie to the claim that the best fight the best in the UFC.
Now it’s about trying to stretch things out as painfully slow as possible, kind of like watching RAW every week on Netflix with 20-minute wrestler entrances and a few crummy matches.
The only big change is perhaps in network stability. Paramount has preliminarily lost out to Netflix in the fight to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery assets. (Nate and Zach will have a lot more to say about this in our next MMA Draw podcast).
Now, UFC is left butt naked and all alone to carry a fledgling Paramount venture that’s starting to look like a weaker version of Spike TV circa 2006. No Taylor Sheridan. No WBD. Even if Netflix’s deal with WBD falls through and they allegedly have to pay a $5B fee, the price of icing out David Ellison and Comcast from buying WBD assets is worth freezing out the competition.
It might very well force Paramount and Comcast into a merger, which would be great for sports fans but would be a far cry from a new-age Hollywood vision that David Ellison was pursuing with Larry Ellison’s Oracle cash. It would, however, greatly fit the profile of current kings of sports private equity financing, Redbird Capital. Redbird is a partner in the Skydance-Paramount merger.
Bottom line? UFC 323 may look like a changing of the guard on paper because of two champions losing their titles (Pantoja and Merab), but the circus feels very much the same.
TKO’s 2026 calendar stuffs Vegas full
It’s heavily compressed, though, by an aggressive Vegas show strategy in the first half of 2026 (Jan. 24 T-Mobile Paddy Pimblett vs. Justin Gaethje, Mar. 7 BMF with Max Holloway vs. Charles Oliveira), Wrestlemania month in April at Allegiant Stadium, plus Zuffa Boxing.
This cluster of Vegas shows will be competing with some pretty significant co-promotional dates for Matchroom Boxing (a date in February at T-Mobile Arena likely Ryan Garcia’s return fight, a date in March that is likely Jaron “Boots” Ennis vs. Vergil Ortiz, and a May date that is likely David Benavidez vs. Gilberto “Zurdo” Ramirez).
Someone’s going to win, and someone’s going to lose with all this show activity in one market.
UFC 323 fights were great, but the gate, not so much
As for UFC 323, it was UFC’s version of a WEC-style event fans would have watched on Versus cable channel 15 years ago.
The WEC (World Extreme Fighting) was a promotion that featured featherweights and bantamweights when the UFC bottomed out at lightweight. Zuffa bought it and ran it independently for several years before folding the promotion into the UFC.
The WEC was famous for putting on great fights that drew minimal fan interest.
UFC 323 carried on that tradition with an epic performance from Petr Yan to take Merab Dvalishvili’s 135lb belt and a heartbreaking TKO injury to defending flyweight champ Alexandre Pantoja that gave Joshua Van the title in a bout that satisfied no one.
Jed I Goodman reported that the gate ($4.7M from 18,603 in attendance) was the lowest reported for a numbered UFC event in 2025 (2nd worst was UFC 315 in Montreal with $6,003,340 from 19,786 in attendance) and was 22nd of 34 UFC events held at the T-Mobile Arena.
That ain’t great.
Before we wrap, there are a couple of updates about the Netflix-WBD deal that were reported on Sunday.