TKO’s Goliath and the Reckoning Ragnarok Incoming

Ragnarok in Real Time: TKO controls the grid, the rest of the players scramble to keep the lights on.

It is strange watching TKO move through the market as if invulnerable. The merger between UFC and WWE has been sold as inevitable, as if consolidation were the same as immortality. Anyone who has studied monopolies knows that rot starts inside the walls long before the first rock is thrown.

TKO’s blueprint is a patchwork of quarterly optimism and ego. When a company owns the board, competition stops following the rulebook. Some rivals bring capital that can drown resistance. Others rely on ideas sharp enough to draw blood.

The giant can fall, but only through endurance and sacrifice. The path to that outcome begins with recognizing its weakness. The name behind that weakness is Mark Shapiro.

His career has been a masterclass in corporate demolition dressed as expansion. Six Flags was his first rehearsal, a lesson in how to inflate expectations, dilute identity, and misread culture. The same playbook is now running through TKO at a higher speed. The American Dream cannot be sold by anyone who no longer understands the dreamer.

Defeating TKO will not come from imitation. Victory now demands new architecture built from zero.

The Market’s Illusionists

The supporting cast is large: PFL, AEW, BKFC, ONE Championship, GLORY Kickboxing, Karate Combat, Dirty Boxing Championship, and the dormant (maybe not, who knows?) Global Fight League. Each claims disruption while recycling decisions made by committees that have never fought for air in the trenches.

Ragnarok is neither legend nor myth. It is now economic correction in motion.

Chatri Sityodtong’s empire at ONE Championship has been living on borrowed conviction. Multiple sources indicate that once Amazon completes onboarding the successor to Marie Donoghue, a sweeping internal audit will follow.

The transition comes as Jay Marine was recently promoted to Head of Prime Video’s U.S. operations, a move that leaves a vacancy in global sports leadership and sets the stage for a new executive to reshape strategy.

That incoming leader will reportedly have full discretion to evaluate all existing sports partnerships, focusing on commercial return and long-term viability. Within that review, ONE Championship’s U.S. initiative stands exposed. What was once a global showcase project could soon be treated as a cost center, placing Chatri and ONE on a short walk toward the operational gallows.

Multiple internal discussions at ESPN following its upcoming executive reshuffle point to diminishing enthusiasm for renewing the PFL rights package beyond 2026.

That hesitation is compounded by reports of ESPN combat executives Matt Kenny and Glenn Jacobs holding advanced discussions with CBS Sports: a potential talent migration that would leave PFL without key internal advocates during a sensitive time period.

The league’s financial runway also appears shorter than projected; its recent infusion from emerging market funds, including ventures tied to Rwanda, offers temporary oxygen but no long-term certainty. Without a major discount on rights fees or a new broadcast home, PFL’s expansion risks becoming overextension by another name.

Empires do not fall by the strength of their enemies, but by the decay of their own faith.

— Arnold J. Toynbee

Shifts in the Ecosystem

The recent Paramount–TKO partnership redefined the American combat-sports map. The seven-year, $7.7 billion agreement places all UFC events: thirteen numbered cards and thirty Fight Nights per year, on Paramount+, with select broadcasts on CBS starting in 2026. The deal ends ESPN’s domestic control of UFC content and replaces the pay-per-view model inside the United States. This is not rivalry, rather integration, and that distinction will define how the next era of combat sports is built. Paramount now operates inside TKO’s distribution core, not around it.

Paramount gains the anchor property ESPN once used to dominate weekends with ESPN+; TKO gains nationwide reach through the most accessible broadcast platform in the country. Their objective is stability disguised as evolution.

Behind the scenes, multiple industry sources confirm that ESPN executives Matt Kenny and Glenn Jacobs are in advanced discussions to join CBS Sports, a move that would signal one of the most significant talent migrations in recent sports-media memory. The two were reportedly handpicked by Dana White, with David Ellison giving the green light to help construct CBS’s new combat-sports division under the broader Paramount framework.

Kenny has overseen ESPN’s global combat-sports programming since 2019: negotiating rights deals for UFC, Top Rank, and PFL; while Jacobs directed production for all MMA coverage across ESPN platforms. Together, they helped anchor the $1.5 billion UFC–ESPN deal that reshaped ESPN+. Their prospective transition to CBS would bring that same production DNA and operational muscle into Paramount’s ecosystem, marking the network’s first major reentry into combat sports since the Showtime merger realignment.

What’s emerging isn’t competition; it’s consolidation disguised as survival. Streaming platforms are merging the same way airlines do… not for innovation’s sake, rather earmarked instead for territory. Networks and leagues are scrambling to stake their claims before the clock runs out. If PFL is already fighting for air, AEW and Tony Khan are in even deeper water, navigating a shrinking pool of capital and a fractured audience. Even boxing’s establishment is feeling the pressure: the reaction to the proposed Ali Act amendment this week was pure panic, the public out-roar, acknowledging the sense that the walls closing in but still can’t agree on where the exits are. Across the industry, everyone’s fighting for relevance in what’s become a contest of who can look tallest while still sinking.

The old order dies not because the new is stronger, but because it is born knowing what the old refused to learn.

— José Rizal

The Contender’s Bleak Horizon

Every league orbiting TKO now stands between adaptation and extinction. The branding differs; the weakness does not. Oversaturation, creative drift, and leadership driven more by optics than operations define an ecosystem still searching for stability.

The Professional Fighters League believed its Bellator acquisition would vault it into the global elite. Instead, it inherited redundancy. The combined calendar blurred distinction, and without a new strategic partner before 2026, the league risks overextension disguised as expansion.

AEW retains genuine cultural currency but is showing signs of fatigue. Ratings slid throughout 2025: one Dynamite episode dropped to 465,000 viewers and a 0.09 demo rating, down 25 percent week-over-week. Critics cite uneven pacing and creative congestion: when the stories hit, they land; when they miss, they drift. Parent company Warner Bros. Discovery remains unstable, open to merger or divestment, and multiple sources have confirmed that WBD’s commitment to AEW beyond the current cycle is uncertain.

Unless AEW delivers its own version of a breakout moment that redefines its value to both advertisers and audiences, renewal appears highly unlikely. If a Paramount-Skydance merger ultimately absorbs WBD’s live-sports assets, AEW may find itself repositioned beside the UFC and WWE juggernaut it once sought to counterbalance.

ONE Championship faces its own reckoning. Amazon’s incoming heir to Donoghue and Marine is expected to favor commercial discipline over idealism, and that recalibration could reshape ONE’s market position.

GLORY Kickboxing, once defined by Scott Rudmann’s connective vision, has entered its consolidation era under Pierre Andurand. According to Companies House filings first noted by Beyond Kickboxing, Rudmann’s formal removal from GSUKCO Limited in September 2024 confirmed Andurand’s full financial control. GLORY now operates less like a promotion than a portfolio asset, steady and visible on DAZN but managed for preservation rather than growth. Its presence in the United States has been almost nonexistent, and the brand feels adrift at a critical crossroads. The question now is what executives like Marshall Zelaznik and Jon Martone are doing to restore relevance and deliver measurable value to a company that once carried the flag for global kickboxing.

Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship sits at the intersection of spectacle and scrutiny. Its affiliation with Triller, which recently disclosed a NASDAQ delisting notice in SEC filings, has drawn heightened attention from regulators and investors alike. The DAZN partnership provides reach but little insulation, and event profitability has tightened. The cancelled Frankie Edgar debut at BKFC 82 revealed the strain beneath the surface: a marquee signing that collapsed days before fight night after conflicting explanations over medical clearances and commission filings. Edgar later said his paperwork had been submitted, while BKFC cited health concerns; the result was confusion, and not clarity. As noted by analysts John S. Nash and Rob Joyner, the episode reinforced doubts about BKFC’s internal coherence.

For a promotion already shadowed by Triller’s financial turbulence, the incident magnified operational uncertainty. Feldman’s recent claim to Ariel Helwani that BKFC’s valuation stood at $350 million raised further questions among industry observers.

There are no SEC filings publicly confirming whether Triller has diluted its ownership stake in BKFC, or whether the valuation reflects realized equity or speculative projection. In a climate where financial scrutiny is intensifying, material representations like that can invite investigation… not applause. The line between hype and liability is now really paper-thin.

On a recent episode of The Weighing In podcast, Josh Thomson discussed Frankie Edgar’s BKFC situation and claimed that Dave Feldman had previously turned down a $100M acquisition offer from Dana White and TKO.

If true, that decision may stand as one of the most consequential miscalculations in modern combat sports business. Rejecting that level of guaranteed liquidity in favor of independent control made sense when momentum was high; in today’s market, it looks more like isolation. BKFC’s leadership bet on autonomy at the exact moment the rest of the sport was consolidating under the largest corporate umbrella it had ever seen.

Karate Combat occupies the opposite extreme: ambition tied to volatility. Its blend of cinematic spectacle and fintech branding gave it early buzz but anchored its identity to unstable markets. As the crypto sector cooled, so did its growth narrative. The visuals remain striking, yet sustainability will depend less on style than structure.

The smaller properties: Dirty Boxing Championship, Global Fight League, and similar experiments; illustrate the same pattern: passion without infrastructure. Novelty can create noise, but not longevity.

Endeavor’s reach extends far beyond the ring. Through TKO and IMG, it operates as a multi-monopoly, a global infrastructure that controls not just events but the entire plumbing of combat sports: advertising, distribution, and representation.

The rest of the field barely qualifies as competition. Most of these outfits function like boutique agencies, not corporations. They don’t understand the mechanics of capital markets or the pace of their own decline heading into 2026.

PBC is reportedly down to a single 2025 show in Texas. Golden Boy’s ticket sales have collapsed. Danny Garcia struggled to draw even a few thousand at Barclays Center. The capital is gone, and the trapdoor has already opened while most still believe they’re standing on solid ground.

With the one and only Nick Khan at TKO, there is no one comparable guiding major media rights negotiations for any of the competitors. The financial oxygen is running out. Nick Khan was the biggest shark in the water long before Endeavor merged its fiefdoms; now he’s the only one.

In 2018, he secured Top Rank’s television deal with ESPN, a move that redefined boxing’s broadcast future and gave him access to everyone’s books. That visibility became his weapon. He learned where every weakness lived, and when he joined TKO… he brought that map with him.

There is no other Nick Khan left for anyone outside that system. The rest of the combat-sports world is running blind, chasing deals that no longer exist and capital that has already been consumed. The boxing promoters will not even say his name. He is watching from the other side of the glass, amused as they struggle in the same pool he drained.

History seldom rewards those who confuse endurance for progress.

— Frantz Fanon

Ultima Sententia

Combat sports stand on the same fault line that once fractured the film and music industries: the moment when ownership began to outpace imagination. TKO’s empire will keep expanding, but expansion breeds inertia. Every acquisition and partnership adds distance from the pulse that once defined it.

The contrast between TKO and its rivals couldn’t be clearer. TKO has the process, the access, the infrastructure, yet none of the substance. The product feels engineered, not lived in.

The idea that WWE could be scripted by AI wasn’t far-fetched because it’s exactly the kind of empty innovation someone like Mark Shapiro would chase.

The non-TKO world, meanwhile, is running on fumes. There’s passion, but no capital. There’s product, but no platform. Even when they build something good, no one is left to notice.

Tony Khan’s decline has scorched the ground others might have grown from. What remains is a market defined by apathy, an audience that’s still watching but no longer invested.

Survival in this next cycle will not belong to those who shout loudest but to those who listen. To the leagues that rebuild credibility with audiences rather than algorithms. To the storytellers who understand that the sport, stripped of pretense, still belongs to the people who fill the seats and click the streams.

When that shift comes, it will not arrive with applause or fireworks. It will reveal itself in silence; when the crowd turns its gaze toward the one promotion, or network, or vision that remembers what every empire forgets…

The audience never belongs to the king. The crowd always belonged to the moment.

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Follow @bobby_s_axelrod on X and @blakeavignon on IG and subscribe to The MMA Draw and The Axe Files for combat sports intel, business crossovers, and breakdowns the mainstream won’t touch.

Blake Avignon is the pseudonym of a strategist and media executive who has worked across the UFC, F1, MLB, NBA, and NFL: building brands, brokering partnerships, and reshaping the future of sports and entertainment from the inside.