WWE & ESPN battle AEW & Tony Khan while the NFL stays quiet
An unmistakable message to a very loud billionaire scion.
It’s not enough to control the world. The next step is erasing your enemy’s footprint.
After Paramount-UFC deal, the NFL-WWE-ESPN onslaught begins
This week’s MMA Draw podcast is one of our best shows to date. We promise.
Hours after The MMA Draw published our new podcast on The Big Club politics of NFL, ESPN, and TKO working together, Disney delivered a very loud public message.
ESPN NFL reporter Adam Schefter advertised WWE’s first ESPN Premium Live Event for September 20th in Indianapolis. The supposed Straight News Guy is reporting on WWE? Kayfabe may not be dead yet in The Magic Kingdom.
Now we know that WWE’s exit from Peacock for PLEs is immediate. And everyone who watches ESPN knows a certain WWE alumnus who happens to reside in Indianapolis, who is quite familiar with the product.
This is going to be Pat McAfee’s personal Super Bowl week on ESPN’s new Direct-To-Consumer platform, which just happens to be launching today as you are reading this article.
That was the carrot for wrestling fans and a stick upside the head against Tony Khan’s All Elite Wrestling. ESPN, a network preparing to give the NFL 10% equity ownership, is actively promoting WWE against the wrestling promotion that belongs to one of the league’s 32 club owners.
In your wildest dreams, could you ever imagine the NFL supporting — tacitly or through silence — opposition against the business interests of one of their exclusive members of the billionaire’s club?
The message from executives Jimmy Pitaro & Matt Kenny to Tony Khan? Nothing personal. Nice knowing ya, kid.
You might chalk all this up to synergy. Your assessment would be largely accurate. However, there’s a much deeper message being delivered here by ESPN, and it is revealing a whole lot about the power players involved.
What journalism?
When the terms and conditions of the ESPN-NFL deal were announced publicly, there was immediate concern in media circles about the impact NFL ownership would have on ESPN’s future ability to independently cover football-related topics without fear or favor.
“What’s over is the NFL is no longer interested in being a sports league. They’re done with it. Roger Goodell, with what I consider to be the quote of the year, maybe the decade. When he said it privately but it’s now public. That he’s not competing with Major League Baseball and the NBA any more. Forget it. He’s now competing with Google and Apple.”
“If you own 10% of a company, you are not going to sit there and criticize Jerry Jones for four hours on ESPN networks. I’m worried about the journalistic integrity, as you should all be, if that’s where you get your journalism.”
Which is why ESPN, with a proposed 10% equity stake given to the NFL, is raising some real eyebrows by utilizing all assets - straight reports and personalities — to promote WWE ventures.
Additionally, Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk raised an incredible side issue regarding the NFL’s 10% equity stake in ESPN. It turns out that the owners, not the players, may be the ones cashing in on this venture.
So, why does any of this matter to you as a UFC fan or fight fan in general?
First and foremost, it means that everything in today’s media and sports landscape is completely riddled by conflicts of interest. Even Big Law firms have to address these types of issues with waivers or declining to represent certain clients.
So many programming decisions are no longer driven by the customer or fan in mind. Who is protecting your interests?
The political marriage between major multi-monopolies like the NFL, Disney, and TKO represents such a dramatic sea change in how you have to decipher media stories.
Forget ethics or black letter law. We are now in an age of cosplaying yakuza-style politics, which is why I feel so confident in my ability to navigate this raunchy business climate in 2025. Except we are in an environment where tens of billions of dollars are at stake. Hyperinflation, I suppose.
Not since my salad days of covering the collapse of PRIDE in 2006 has my radar been so damn accurate.
When it comes to big money stories, like Wednesday’s announcement of Jake Paul vs. Gervonta “Tank” Davis, it’s always important to see which parties aren’t talking publicly. Watch and see which dogs aren’t barking. You can get a better sense of how a story is playing out and who is pulling the strings by figuring out who’s not involved as opposed to who is involved.
Which brings us to current NFL ownership.
Tony Khan vs. other NFL owners
Roger Goodell obsesses over the “integrity” of The Shield. Mike Florio has a brand new book published called Big Shield. I’m sure there is no connection between the two.
The overarching theme of protecting The Shield is that the NFL is an exclusive club full of wacky billionaires who have their fiefdoms to protect. Park Avenue is as big, if not bigger, than the NFL owners. Roger Goodell has made many men very rich.
What about Tony Khan and All Elite Wrestling?
Shahid & Tony Khan are outliers in this big, bad billionaires club. The Jacksonville Jaguars are a punchline to most of the NFL fan base. And yet, the Khan family is worth billions of dollars, and they just got approval for a brand new stadium to stay in North Florida.
Given their various business ventures in the United Kingdom, the Khans have more or less been American football ambassadors for the NFL. The goal has always been for a Super Bowl in London at Wembley Stadium.
Recent developments involving the White House and the NFL regarding foreign business ventures are extremely curious. Why aren’t the Khans connected to the hip with Roger Goodell publicly for recruiting a Super Bowl to London?
If this were Jerry Jones or Jeffrey Lurie, you better believe they would be side-by-side with The Commissioner in politicking for the Super Bowl while promoting their own business side ventures.
Owners in the big NFL club may not like each other, but the Park Avenue office exists to try to keep a semblance of peace through coercion and cash. When one owner steps out of line, The Shield is there to either smother a scandal or silence the out-of-line actor. There are different shades of protection.
Tony Khan, right now, is not as protected as you might think by the NFL at large, and we are starting to see an unsettling development emerge.
Tensions escalated in 2021 when Tony Khan went after Nick Khan.
Over the last four years, Nick Khan and Team TKO has taken this message to heart. TKO has never wasted any opportunities to try to rip Tony Khan’s heart out of his chest. Marquess of Queensberry Rules, right?
Troubles continued for the Jacksonville Jaguar franchise with the $22 million dollar employee fraud scandal involving gambling debts. Then-Jacksonville place kicker Brandon McManus was sued for allegations regarding airplane conduct.
Things took a sharp and dramatic turn during the 2024 NFL Draft when Tony Khan showed up in a neck brace. He had recently been tombstoned in Jacksonville.
After channeling the spirit of Andy Kaufman, Tony Khan went all in by calling WWE “the Harvey Weinstein of professional wrestling.”
How did NFL Media and NFL ownership respond? They went all-in promoting WWE talent and merchandising on all available media programming and platforms.
Between Michael Rubin of Fanatics, Gerry Cardinale of Redbird Capital (Everpass), and Endeavor’s OnLocation VIP operations, the NFL cares about making money and not getting embarrassed. WWE is not embarrassing in today’s corporate world. It’s the safe and winning side.
NFL ownership weighed and measured Tony Khan’s professional behavior. The NFL isn’t promoting All Elite Wrestling with nearly the same synergy as they promote WWE assets.
The NFL is in the ESPN business. ESPN is in the WWE business. Which means the WWE is now the NFL’s business. ESPN has wasted no time in joining this battle.
This is a brass knuckles broadside and NFL ownership, at best, is on the sidelines not defending a member of their own club. This is public emasculation.
If Tony Khan, a member of the NFL’s Billionaires Club, can’t escape the wrath of the TKO multi-monopoly and its marriage to the NFL Shield, what chance do the rest of us have in terms of competing in the combat sports landscape?
Forget fundraising. Forget the insane cost regarding barriers of entry. Forget the shrinking pool of media platforms willing to take a chance on non-TKO promotions.
Given the unparalleled influence over US corporate media platforms of Ari Emanuel and Nick Khan, they can eliminate competition by simply having their allies buy out the opposition. If Paramount buys out Warner Bros., home to All Elite Wrestling, then Tony Khan faces an existential crisis.
If a billionaire in America’s most popular sporting venture can be targeted for erasure by some of the world’s richest sports properties, how can anyone exist independently in this combat sports space?
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.
I mean, look.
WWE/TKO and ESPN desperately don't understand this stuff. While there's overlap in the WWE/AEW audience, it's not anywhere near what they assume. This idea that they can go head-to-head and strip away their viewship is so misguided.
Lemme tell you, I'm a dude who's been watching wrestling for a long time, and guess what? I don't watch or care about any sports. Zero. Nada. I attend my local USL soccer team's games with my kids because they enjoy it. Otherwise? Nothing. Combat sports are too toxic to bother with anymore, and whatever love I had for them winnowed away years ago.
I haven't touched WWE since the Saudi deal happened, and probably never will again. It's too bad, they've got a lot of great talent, and I'm sure some of it is really fun. While I am under no delusion that any company or individual in wrestling will share my values, at least watching AEW isn't helping push destructive agendas and line the pockets of some of the worst people imaginable today. The Harvey Weinstein of pro wrestling indeed.
On the other side, AEW--not without its faults--feels closer to being an actual wrestling show that cares about wrestling. There's a decent part of the AEW audience that's closer to me than whatever fan WWE thinks they're going to steal away. Someone who doesn't care about sports, doesn't like WWE's politics, history and culture, and who has limited time to waste on watching stuff that comes with too many problems to be able to enjoy it.