The MMA Draw Podcast

The MMA Draw Podcast
The MMA Draw Podcast
  • 3.4 (199)
  • Sports
  • Updated Weekly

Nate Wilcox, the founder of Bloody Elbow and Zach Arnold, the founder of Fight Opinion explain the game behind the fights, covering the business of MMA, combat sports and a little bit of pro wrestling. www.themmadraw.com

  1. 2d ago

    Over 200 million reasons for TKO to worry about Saudi Arabia

    This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.themmadraw.com UFC 333 this weekend is in Abu Dhabi. The US Embassy for the UAE just issued a warning for those travelling into the country to have contingency plans ready. Yes, we know that UFC has a direct line of communication to The White House. That doesn’t mean President Trump can stop Iranian and Houthi drone strikes. Oh, and there was this headline on the social media site formerly known as Twitter: If you want to fly into the Middle East, Bahrain and Dubai are your likely choices. Is Mark Shapiro going to ship a bunch of nervous WWE wrestlers to Qatar and drive them into Saudi Arabia under the cover of darkness? We are covering this madness because TKO, which we correctly identified in 2023 as a massive government contractor, has put fighters and fans into an unholy position of worrying about their safety in order to cash monster checks from their Saudi Santa (aka Turki Alalshikh). A rumored $60M pay day for Crown Jewel on November 7th in Riyadh. Morgan Stanley recently estimated a $150M pay day for Wrestlemania 43. The same Morgan Stanley that increased TKO’s credit (card) facility in March 2026 to $350 million dollars AND helped finance a massive $900 million dollar TKO buyback of stock. So, if Morgan Stanley is estimating $150M for Wrestlemania, they have inside information that none of us know about it. Back in March 2026, Nate Wilcox 100% correctly warned that Wall Street and TKO executives were miscalculating their risk exposure by placing Wrestlemania 43 in Saudi Arabia. It’s an article TKO suits should read very carefully. Simply put, TKO has boxed themselves into a corner. It’s starting to get late to develop contingency plans that can generate a fraction of what these monstrous Saudi government contracts are worth. TKO’s Q3 2026 Wall Street conference call is three days before Crown Jewel. While every other major Riyadh Season event (such as Six Kings Tennis or Davos in the Desert) is getting postponed, canceled, or converted into a remote setting, nobody in general business or sports press is talking about Canelo Alvarez’s fight on Halloween, Crown Jewel on November 7th, or Wrestlemania 43 in 2027. These are the events that really personally matter to Turki Alalshikh and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. This week’s edition of The MMA Draw podcast is absolutely insane. If you think our Youtube content for The Mad Squabbles Show is nuts, and it most certainly is, wait until you get a load of this week’s Substack podcast. Six Degrees of Ali Abdelaziz For our paid subscribers, we have an insane political story involving a MAGA Royalty Blood Feud that Nate & Zach jokingly call a custody battle over UFC’s favorite manager Ali Abdelaziz. A blood feud is developing between President Trump’s favorite attorney, Alina Habba, and one of his top foreign policy fixers in Ric Grenell. Ric Grenell is close to Ali Abdelaziz. They met in September 2020 at a Trump rally in Henderson, Nevada. Grenell deployed Ali and his UFC fighters to Dearborn, Michigan in 2024 for President Trump to win the electoral swing state of Michigan against Kamala Harris. Since the start of the Second Trump White House, Ali Abdelaziz is everywhere. He’s besties with FBI Director Kash Patel. The UFC just got a no-bid government contract for FBI agent training. Then came a shocking wedding photo from September 2026. Alina Habba celebrated her third marriage, this time to a supposed Turkish billionaire in his 20s. In the wedding photo, taken at the Waldorf Astoria in New York City, was FBI Director Kash Patel… and Ali Abdelaziz. Weeks later, media reports surfaced regarding explosive allegations that Habba’s Turkish billionaire husband was upset that money he supposedly contributed (allegedly $6 million dollars) based on suggestion by then-Kennedy Center executive director Ric Grenell did not end up going to The Kennedy Center. Grenell denied the accusation and a Saturday New York Times article claimed that the Turkish billionaire’s contribution came from the government of Congo. This rang alarm bells for us because there was a retired UFC fighter connection to Congo reported on various military social media news channels. One month ago, retired Green Beret Tim Kennedy was reportedly shot multiple times while working as a mercenary for infamous private contractor Erik Prince in the Congo under the banner of Vectus Global. Kennedy was transported to Walter Reed Medical Center. If you remember the George W. Bush years with his struggles rebuilding and maintaining a functioning government in Iraq, then you most likely remember the name Blackwater. That’s the same Erik Prince. His sister, Betsy DeVos, was President Trump’s first Secretary of Education. What are the Washington DC connections that possibly tie Prince, Kennedy, and Alina Habba’s husband with Congolese government money? What happens if Ali Abdelaziz’s long-time Trump friendly political fixer Ric Grenell lands in hot water with President Trump? It’s a stunning and bizarre political story with more twists and turns than you can keep up with. But we are on it this week for our paid subscribers to The MMA Draw Newsletter. Just remember, you are always years ahead of the political curve if you are a paid subscriber to our newsletter. Easily the smartest, savviest readership in all of combat sports. Fair Use Media Clips (links) Multimedia we used on this week’s edition of The MMA Draw podcast: * Al Jazeera English (October 14, 2026): Saudi-led coalition intercepts Houthi ballistic missile targeting Riyadh * WWE (September 12, 2025): FULL ANNOUNCEMENT: WrestleMania 43 is heading to Saudi Arabia in 2027 * Paramount: Shakiel Mahjouri talks with Dana White about UFC 333 in Abu Dhabi Nate Wilcox is Editor-in-Chief of The MMA Draw. He founded BloodyElbow.com in 2007 and sold it in 2024. Zach Arnold is a lead opinion writer for The MMA Draw on Substack. His archives can be read at FightOpinion.com. Contact Zach: fightopinion at protonmail dot com. Ways to listen to this episode The first 20 minutes are free for everyone; the full 55 minutes is for paid subscribers. PAID SUBSCRIBERS The easy way is the Substack app: https://substack.com/app Install it, sign in with the email address you subscribed with, and the full episode is waiting. Prefer your usual podcast app? Set your private feed up once, and every full episode arrives automatically from then on: 1. Open https://www.themmadraw.com/account 2. Copy the URL under “Private podcast feed” 3. Paste it into Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket Casts, or whatever you use. It’s tied to your account — please don’t share it. Seeing a 20-minute version of this episode? That’s the public preview feed. Use your private feed instead.

  2. Oct 12

    Double Trouble for TKO money men Turki Alalshikh & Khaldoon Al Mubarak

    This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.themmadraw.com The chickens have come home to roost for TKO for linking UFC, WWE, and Zuffa Boxing so closely with Gulf State Sovereign Wealth Funds. Houthi drone attacks are hitting Saudi Arabia hard just weeks before Canelo Alvarez is scheduled to box in Riyadh on Halloween and WWE’s Crown Jewel event. These fights are worth hundreds of millions of dollars. If they get canceled or postponed, lawsuits will be flying. TKO’s stock will take a hit. 2027 government contracts, including WrestleMania 43, will face major scrutiny. Ari Emanuel’s two biggest Arab combat sports money marks, Turki Alalshikh and Khaldoon Al Mubarak, are under the microscope on this week’s edition of The MMA Draw podcast. For our free subscribers, we break down what we view as the giant game of chicken happening between Turki and Canelo Alvarez. If Alvarez pulls out of his boxing match with Christian M’billi, he stands to lose tens of millions of dollars. If he proceeds with the fight, there’s a solid chance he could lose the bout while fighting in an actively hot war zone! Take away Saudi money from Mark Shapiro’s Goldman Sachs sales pitch and suddenly the TKO stock is extremely vulnerable to a 10-15% dip. Saudi money is part of TKO’s proposition as both a value stock (monetization) AND a growth stock (Zuffa Boxing). For our paid subscribers, the much bigger long-term story for TKO is the future of Khaldoon Al Mubarak as a sports investor. The UAE has been a significant player in the UFC’s corporate life story. From Abu Dhabi Combat Club to Flash Entertainment’s 10% ownership to Ari Emanuel’s 2009 introduction to Khaldoon, the UFC is as much a property of the UAE as it is American. Watching the UK public-at-large (politicians, soccer fans, tabloids) turn on Khaldoon Al Mubarak has created significant heartburn for UK PM Andy Burnham, the former mayor of Greater Manchester. The tabloids have gone as far as to call for the UK government to strip Khaldoon of his diplomatic immunity. Why did the public silently go along with Turki Alalshikh financing all of their major boxing fights post-COVID crash but now is angry about a much more successful and savvy Gulf State player? This is a nuisance for Ari Emanuel. When the Saudi money dries up for good for TKO, Mubadala (Khaldoon) is the backstop. UAE money is directly tied to Skydance, Microsoft, Oracle, and OpenAI. What happens if the English Premier League and the UK government tank the value of Manchester City? Some big stress tests are coming up for TKO and their main financiers. You will not hear this sharp analysis anywhere else with the kind of precision we deliver. Paid subscribers get their money’s worth. Join the industry’s top insiders in subscribing to The MMA Draw Newsletter on Substack. Big Law firms, financiers, promoters, and top public relations firms all subscribe to our Substack newsletter. Don’t miss your chance to be years ahead of the curve on the biggest stories behind the scenes in combat sports. Nate Wilcox is Editor-in-Chief of The MMA Draw. He founded BloodyElbow.com in 2007 and sold it in 2024. Zach Arnold is a lead opinion writer for The MMA Draw on Substack. His archives can be read at FightOpinion.com. Contact Zach: fightopinion at protonmail dot com. Ways to listen to this episode The first 20 minutes are free for everyone; the full 45 minutes is for paid subscribers. PAID SUBSCRIBERS The easy way is the Substack app: https://substack.com/app Install it, sign in with the email address you subscribed with, and the full episode is waiting. Prefer your usual podcast app? Set your private feed up once, and every full episode arrives automatically from then on: 1. Open https://www.themmadraw.com/account 2. Copy the URL under “Private podcast feed” 3. Paste it into Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket Casts, or whatever you use. It’s tied to your account — please don’t share it. Seeing a 20-minute version of this episode? That’s the public preview feed. Use your private feed instead.

  3. Sep 29

    Biggest winners & losers in Paramount-WBD merger

    This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.themmadraw.com Barring any unforeseen setbacks, Paramount is about to close its merger with Warner Bros. Discovery. Hollywood is bracing for the layoffs. Wall Street is staring at a reported $77 billion in debt. And someone is going to pay for it all. How much is this going to cost all of us? We have a better sense of who is initially propping up this Paramount-WBD merger. As recently noted in an FCC filing, the Trump administration is granting a waiver to approve a scenario where up to 87.5% of the non-voting Class B shares can be financed by the UAE, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia. These three Gulf states are currently taking the hardest hits from the war with Iran. On Monday note, Deadline reported that the Ellisons are preparing to fundraise $44 billion dollars in senior secured notes for Paramount-WBD. Larry Ellison is backstopping his end with Oracle stock, and Oracle just invoked force majeure on a major data center project in New Mexico. That is the collateral propping up the platform for UFC’s streaming home. Meanwhile, the people actually paying for Paramount+ are getting a clunky app, AI-cut replays, and a price hike that is surely coming. Nobody in these billion-dollar conversations is asking about what the customer wants. So we did. The MMA Draw Newsletter is asking — and answering — the big questions nobody else is regarding UFC and boxing. Paid subscribers get a real seat at the table. The first 20 minutes of this week’s show are free for everyone. The full hour is for paid subscribers, and that’s where we name the winners and the losers. For our paid subscribers, here’s a big preview of this week’s podcast: * Is AEW next on the chopping block? Warner Bros. Discovery owns a minority stake in Tony Khan’s company, and Paramount is already Ari Emanuel territory. The same weekend AEW ran All Out in Chicago, WWE ran Worlds Collide with AAA in the suburbs. Was that an audition for the Ellisons, signaling that Paramount has an option to replace AEW? * Nick Khan tells you what he’s going to do before he does it. We break down his interview with John Ourand at Puck: the one-stop-shop boxing pitch to media buyers; Dr. Rakan Alharthy, the real power player behind Saudi’s London administrative office SELA; and a claim that boxing is the fourth-favorite sport among young fans. If that’s true, why does TKO need Congress to pass the Ali Revival Act? * Where does the big money to support Paramount come from next? Oracle, OpenAI, the private credit funds, the Gulf states. If the collateral cracks and Larry Ellison faces margin calls, does anyone get a bailout? And is TKO built to ride out a crash that the people running it never imagined? * In response to Luke Thomas and his recent video interview with Nate about how the UFC became a political mercenary, Zach has an informal response. We view the UFC not as an American company but rather as property of the UAE. From Khaldoon Al Mubarak to Fight Island, this week’s podcast traces how the UAE saved Ari Emanuel’s empire during COVID, and why the US/Iranian war puts that relationship in a precarious spot. * Ari Emanuel, the fixer of fixers. His memoir Roll the Calls trashes the Fertittas, Vince McMahon, and Patrick Whitesell, the people who made him a billionaire. And yet he still ends up with all the power in the Paramount deal and none of the downside risk the Ellisons are carrying. How does he keep finding money marks? Want the Hollywood side of the story first? On Puck’s Powers That Be Daily, Hollywood insider Matt Belloni joins Peter Hamby to break down Ari Emanuel’s explosive new memoir, and the decades of Hollywood battles, rivalries, and power plays behind his rise to the top. Nate Wilcox is Editor-in-Chief of The MMA Draw. He founded BloodyElbow.com in 2007 and sold it in 2024. Zach Arnold is a lead opinion writer for The MMA Draw on Substack. His archives can be read at FightOpinion.com. Contact Zach: fightopinion at protonmail dot com. Ways to listen to this episode The first 20 minutes are free for everyone; the full hour is for paid subscribers. PAID SUBSCRIBERS The easy way is the Substack app: https://substack.com/app Install it, sign in with the email address you subscribed with, and the full episode is waiting. Prefer your usual podcast app? Set your private feed up once, and every full episode arrives automatically from then on: 1. Open https://www.themmadraw.com/account 2. Copy the URL under “Private podcast feed” 3. Paste it into Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket Casts, or whatever you use. It’s tied to your account — please don’t share it. Seeing a 20-minute version of this episode? That’s the public preview feed. Use your private feed instead.

  4. Sep 17

    Rage, Rings, and Riyadh: Ted Cruz helps TKO build a Zuffa Boxing monopoly

    This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.themmadraw.com This has been one hell of a week for Ari Emanuel, Mark Shapiro, and Nick Khan at TKO HQ. In only a matter of minutes during Wednesday’s US Senate mark-up session, Ted Cruz passed the Muhammad Ali American Boxing Revival Act out of his committee. It’s quickly heading for a floor vote. Once the US House returns into session… whenever that may be… the Ali Revival Act will get signed into law by President Trump. Last Saturday’s fight with Ryan Garcia was a test run to see how Zuffa Boxing can impact the landscape on Paramount. The Ali Revival Act legislation is the Walmart blueprint for Zuffa Boxing to monopolize yet another TKO-controlled combat sports property. This week’s edition of The Mad Squabbles show — a delayed digest version on our Youtube channel that you should absolutely subscribe to — and the uncensored version here on Substack are can’t miss audio podcasts. For our paid subscribers, here’s a big preview of this week’s podcast: * A detailed look at Scott Coker’s new Ki MMA promotion. We raised five important questions that must be answered by any new upstart fight promoter. A key focus is a debate about whether or not it’s easier to fundraise before you promote events or if investors only care about turnkey operations. * A deep dive — plus audio clips — from Mark Shapiro’s Communacopia conference call with Goldman Sachs. He said a lot that wasn’t picked up by the fight or business media. When it comes to TKO, trying to read the tea leaves is like reading Pravda. What is TKO’s grand plan to monopolize aka “clean up” boxing once the Ali Revival Act is signed into law? * Ari Emanuel’s brand new memoir next week titled Roll the Calls is ready to settle some scores. Early reviews claim that the book is light on details about TKO business. However, Puck is reporting that this book is all about “Ari Emanuel’s manifesto of rage” towards his former business partner Patrick Whitesell. There are significant lessons to be learned about how Ari Emanuel built his multi-billion dollar by being a combat sports carny. Ari would still rather be known as The King of Hollywood. If history tells us anything, Ari Emanuel is going to utilize TKO sports properties to influence this upcoming 2028 US Presidential cycle. Ari has so much influence in sports, entertainment, and politics that you can no longer avoid his presence. * Two major challenges both WWE & UFC are facing. WWE has some big Saudi questions to answer and UFC finds itself in a very curious position with Paramount shifting so much of their focus onto college football and NFL programming. Will the new Paramount media rights deal incentivize UFC to have an offseason with even sloppier matchmaking? We close this week’s podcast with some reflections upon the last three years of combat sports coverage since the formation of TKO. A look back at some of our early predictions for The MMA Draw Newsletter and how shocking the current state of affairs truly is. Ways to listen to this episode This is a subscriber-only episode. The first 30 minutes are free for everyone; the full hour is for paid subscribers. PAID SUBSCRIBERS The easy way is the Substack app: https://substack.com/app Install it, sign in with the email address you subscribed with, and the full episode is waiting. Prefer your usual podcast app? Set your private feed up once, and every full episode arrives automatically from then on: 1. Open https://www.themmadraw.com/account 2. Copy the URL under “Private podcast feed” 3. Paste it into Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket Casts, or whatever you use. It’s tied to your account — please don’t share it. Seeing a 38-minute version of this episode? That’s the public preview feed. Use your private feed instead. Nate Wilcox is Editor-in-Chief of The MMA Draw. He founded BloodyElbow.com in 2007 and sold it in 2024. Zach Arnold is a lead opinion writer for The MMA Draw on Substack. His archives can be read at FightOpinion.com. Contact Zach: fightopinion at protonmail dot com.

    Rage, Rings, and Riyadh: Ted Cruz helps TKO build a Zuffa Boxing monopoly

  5. Sep 8

    Billion dollar war pains for Turki & Saudi sports investments

    This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.themmadraw.com What changed for our favorite benevolent boxing dictator, Turki Alalshikh, in the year 2026? Three years ago, the enforcer from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was buying whatever boxing fights and promoters he wanted loyalty from. Everyone, including press writers, started calling him His Excellency. 2025 looked to be an unstoppable campaign for Saudi Arabia flexing its muscle in combat sports, thanks to their alliance with TKO. Check out our latest Mad Squabbles YouTube content and subscribe to our channel. A year later, everything has changed. But why? Ask most hardcore boxing fans on social media, and they’ll come up with a myriad of reasons. Poor health. Ungrateful promoters like Eddie Hearn. Fight politics. Greed. Boxing is a dying business. The usual excuses. What changed was the condition of Gulf State financing thanks to the brutal and swift fallout from the US/Iran war. The biggest targets have been US military bases, oil tankers, and Aramco. War has hit the ruling class where it hurts the most. This week’s edition of The Mad Squabbles MMA Draw podcast focuses on how quickly fortunes have changed for the billionaire sports investment class thanks to the Iranian government and their associates inflicting hundreds of billions of dollars worth of damage. The kind of damage that can impact the Kingdom’s ability to fulfill its commitments. In our little corner of the world, this includes Zuffa Boxing. It also includes the escalating financial stakes of the Paramount-WBD merger, which has a significant backstop from the Gulf States. Betting against the Saudis a year ago looked impossible to imagine. War changed everything. News and inspiration This week’s podcast relies upon several mainstream media articles, both old and new, to tell a much larger story about how the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia mainstreamed its investments into the Western hemisphere, only to find itself clawing back some of those investments because of their belief in the United States as a military protectorate. * The New Yorker (April 2021): Ari Emanuel takes on the world * The Guardian (November 2022): The Godfather, Saudi-style * The Athletic/New York Times (April 2025): Turki Al-Sheikh and the two sides of boxing’s new king These three articles are incredible. If you’ve never read them, now is your chance to hear all about these stories on this week’s MMA Draw podcast. It’s been approximately a decade since Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman grabbed control of the Kingdom with his enforcer Turki. The COVID crash provided the Kingdom a major opportunity to debt-finance global expansion plans into sports & entertainment. Now that checkbook is being severely threatened by the Iranians. * India Today (September 2026): Saudi Aramco Jizan oil hub hit again * Reuters (August 2026): Yemen’s Houthis say they attacked Najran airport, Aramco facilities in Saudi Arabia * Reuters (August 2026): Aramco says US-Iran war has cost the global market 2.6 billion barrels of oil * Reuters (August 2026): Iran warns Gulf states: tell Trump to desist or we hit you hard * Bloomberg (August 2026): Saudis explore about $8 billion dollars in loans Life comes at you fast. The longer the Paramount-WBD merger transaction drags out, the more money it’s going to cost the players involved. The longer the war between the US and Iran lasts, the more complicated petroleum-based financing becomes for the Kingdom. In a totally normal and sane world, none of this would matter in our little corner of combat sports. But you can thank TKO for becoming a Boeing-style government contractor and political mercenary that is tied into the major sovereign wealth funds of the Gulf States. You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you. Ways to listen to this episode This is a subscriber-only episode. The first 30 minutes are free for everyone; the full hour is for paid subscribers. PAID SUBSCRIBERS The easy way is the Substack app: https://substack.com/app Install it, sign in with the email address you subscribed with, and the full episode is waiting. Prefer your usual podcast app? Set your private feed up once, and every full episode arrives automatically from then on: 1. Open https://www.themmadraw.com/account 2. Copy the URL under “Private podcast feed” 3. Paste it into Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket Casts, or whatever you use. It’s tied to your account — please don’t share it. Seeing a 30-minute version of this episode? That’s the public preview feed. Use your private feed instead. Nate Wilcox is Editor-in-Chief of The MMA Draw. He founded BloodyElbow.com in 2007 and sold it in 2024. Zach Arnold is a lead opinion writer for The MMA Draw on Substack. His archives can be read at FightOpinion.com. Contact Zach: fightopinion at protonmail dot com.

    Billion dollar war pains for Turki & Saudi sports investments

  6. Aug 31

    The Mad Squabbles Show: The Price of War & Paper Billionaires in Sport

    This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.themmadraw.com This is absolutely the week when it pays to be a paid subscriber to The MMA Draw newsletter on Substack. We’ve been very busy on multimedia projects and would like to give you a preview of coming attractions. Subscribe and check out our latest Mad Squabbles YouTube content. Like the part of this episode we gave away on YouTube. This is where we will be posting shorter videos with entry-level discussion married to interactive graphics. Substack is where you can access our long-form podcasts unfiltered and uncensored. This week’s Mad Squabbles podcast is centered around two very important articles we recently published at The MMA Draw: * Blake Avignon - Serpents in the Garden: Fury vs. Joshua, MSG, and the Contract War (August 27, 2026) * Zach Arnold & Nate Wilcox - TKO & Redbird swap Everpass for DAZN. What now for Eddie Hearn? (August 28, 2026) To make a long story short, you are starting to see the same multi-billionaire operators take over multiple sports teams in multiple sports leagues. The concentration of power for a very select few dealmakers is intensifying. The paper billionaires who don’t have instant access to liquidity are in emergency mode, hanging on for dear life. Many of the names we’ve spotted in the TKO orbit over the last three years are now invading the global sports orbit. Egon Durban. Ari Emanuel. Gerry Cardinale. Apollo Global Management. Khaldoon Al Mubarak. What is it that we spotted in 2023 with TKO in our coverage at The MMA Draw that gave us a key advantage before other sports writers and talking heads? Our experience covering TKO gave us a chance to build experience covering high finance, politics, and war. Without this knowledge base, there is no way that we could cover what is happening in this insane sports financial cycle where multi-billion dollar teams are flipping like 1980s baseball trading cards. How does the Mark Walter saga with Guggenheim, the Lakers, and potentially the Dodgers fit into this picture? It’s all about insurance, Sovereign Wealth Funds, and Abu Dhabi. Listen to this week’s podcast to find out all the details. There’s a reason so many people inside the combat sports industry have been caught flat-footed. But not our loyal subscribers to The MMA Draw newsletter. You have been way ahead of the curve. What happened to the game we used to love? That’s where we step in with deep knowledge about war and peace on this week’s edition of The Mad Squabbles Show. The Receipts Some of our sources for the show: Video of Zuffa Boxing presser at Fanatics Fest NYC in July 2026: Ways to listen to this episode This is a subscriber-only episode. The first 30 minutes are free for everyone; the full hour is for paid subscribers. PAID SUBSCRIBERS The easy way is the Substack app: https://substack.com/app Install it, sign in with the email address you subscribed with, and the full episode is waiting. Prefer your usual podcast app? Set your private feed up once, and every full episode arrives automatically from then on: 1. Open https://www.themmadraw.com/account 2. Copy the URL under “Private podcast feed” 3. Paste it into Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket Casts, or whatever you use. It’s tied to your account — please don’t share it. Seeing a 30-minute version of this episode? That’s the public preview feed. Use your private feed instead. Nate Wilcox is Editor-in-Chief of The MMA Draw. He founded BloodyElbow.com in 2007 and sold it in 2024. Zach Arnold is a lead opinion writer for The MMA Draw on Substack. His archives can be read at FightOpinion.com. Contact Zach: fightopinion at protonmail dot com.

  7. Aug 24

    Resending Full Version for Free: Mad Squabbles Show: UFC’s role in the Paramount-WBD merger

    This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.themmadraw.com Sorry, I screwed up the paywall thing and blocked free subscribers from accessing the episode — which includes a free one-month subscription offer for free subscribers so…oops! Resending. What is the common link the UFC, Paramount, Manchester City, the Los Angeles Lakers, and the Los Angeles Dodgers all share? They share ties to the same multi-billionaire world leaders who are pushing puny lower-class billionaires to the side for sports ownership. This phenomenon has been building for a decade, and you can trace some of its roots to a 2009 meeting between Ari Emanuel and Khaldoon Al Mubarak of the UAE’s sovereign wealth fund, Mubadala. Connie Bruck’s 2021 New Yorker article titled Ari Emanuel Takes on the World was an eerie foreshadowing of things to come in global sport. Ari Emanuel is bundling billionaires for global sport the same way he bundled millionaires for Hollywood Democrats: Egon Durban. Khaldoon Al Mubarak. David Ellison. That is the focus of this week’s Mad Squabbles podcast for The MMA Draw. There has been a month-long blizzard of media headlines regarding the Paramount/Warner Brothers Discovery merger and antitrust opposition to it. When you get down to it, what really matters to UFC fans? That’s our focus on this week’s podcast. The role of the UFC in Paramount’s global expansion is far greater than you truly appreciate. Most importantly, the TKO empire has consolidated the world’s most elite billionaires in their own Super Billionaire League of ownership and control. The Mark Walter story with the Lakers (and perhaps the Dodgers soon) highlights how quickly things are moving under the feet of billionaire sports owners. It’s why Scott Barrett’s Long Term Bull Thesis on TKO was one of the most important articles we’ve published at The MMA Draw. You’ll find out exactly why on this week’s edition of The Mad Squabbles Show with Nate Wilcox & Zach Arnold. If you listen to the show or read this far, we’d like to give you a free month’s subscription; click here to collect. On the show, Nate talked about using the password Preston, but it turns out that won’t work on Substack, so never mind about that. Ways to listen to this episode This is a subscriber-only episode. The first six minutes are free for everyone; the full hour is for paid subscribers (but we’re giving away a month free at this link.) PAID SUBSCRIBERS The easy way is the Substack app: https://substack.com/app Install it, sign in with the email address you subscribed with, and the full episode is waiting. Prefer your usual podcast app? Set your private feed up once, and every full episode arrives automatically from then on: 1. Open https://www.themmadraw.com/account 2. Copy the URL under “Private podcast feed” 3. Paste it into Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket Casts, or whatever you use. It’s tied to your account — please don’t share it. Seeing a six-minute version of this episode? That’s the public preview feed. Use your private feed instead. NOT A PAID SUBSCRIBER YET? As promised on the show — the Preston offer gets you a free month. Just open that link; no code to type. It runs for 30 days from when you click it. Full episode, the archive, and the comments: https://www.themmadraw.com/subscribe

  8. Aug 24

    Mad Squabbles Show: UFC’s role in the Paramount-WBD merger

    This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.themmadraw.com What is the common link the UFC, Paramount, Manchester City, the Los Angeles Lakers, and the Los Angeles Dodgers all share? They share ties to the same multi-billionaire world leaders who are pushing puny lower-class billionaires to the side for sports ownership. This phenomenon has been building for a decade, and you can trace some of its roots to a 2009 meeting between Ari Emanuel and Khaldoon Al Mubarak of the UAE’s sovereign wealth fund, Mubadala. Connie Bruck’s 2021 New Yorker article titled Ari Emanuel Takes on the World was an eerie foreshadowing of things to come in global sport. Ari Emanuel is bundling billionaires for global sport the same way he bundled millionaires for Hollywood Democrats: Egon Durban. Khaldoon Al Mubarak. David Ellison. That is the focus of this week’s Mad Squabbles podcast for The MMA Draw. There has been a month-long blizzard of media headlines regarding the Paramount/Warner Brothers Discovery merger and antitrust opposition to it. When you get down to it, what really matters to UFC fans? That’s our focus on this week’s podcast. The role of the UFC in Paramount’s global expansion is far greater than you truly appreciate. Most importantly, the TKO empire has consolidated the world’s most elite billionaires in their own Super Billionaire League of ownership and control. The Mark Walter story with the Lakers (and perhaps the Dodgers soon) highlights how quickly things are moving under the feet of billionaire sports owners. It’s why Scott Barrett’s Long Term Bull Thesis on TKO was one of the most important articles we’ve published at The MMA Draw. You’ll find out exactly why on this week’s edition of The Mad Squabbles Show with Nate Wilcox & Zach Arnold. If you listen to the show or read this far, we’d like to give you a free month’s subscription; click here to collect. On the show, Nate talked about using the password Preston, but it turns out that won’t work on Substack, so never mind about that. We did a shortened version of this for YouTube THE RECEIPTS Every document we put on screen, in the order we hit them ------------------------------------------------------------------- Everything we put on screen in this episode’s YouTube version is below, in order, with the timestamp where we get to it - so you can read the sources yourself instead of taking our word for any of it. If you only want the UFC end of the story, the eighteen-minute cut is on YouTube: 0. WHERE THIS STARTS Where the 2009 meeting between Emanuel and Khaldoon Al Mubarak of Mubadala is reported, and the piece that saw the shape of all of this before anyone was calling it a sports story. Everything below is what happened next. 1. DAVID ELLISON SAYS HE’S LEAVING CALIFORNIA 1:17 - The threat that started the whole news cycle. Worth noting who it is aimed at: not Californians. 6:23 - The 415,000-square-foot property in Austin. The lot he is supposedly buying sits next to an actual garbage dump. Not the Tesla factory. A garbage dump. 2. THE THEATRE CHAINS PICK A SIDE 6:55 - The PR war with AMC. Exhibitors are not neutral parties here and this is where they show it. 3. NEWSOM, 2028, AND WHERE HOLLYWOOD MONEY GOES 17:40 - Newsom backing the merger. Every Republican and every Democrat in California is on board except one man, and we get to him further down. 18:07 - Ari and Katzenberg over the CNN debate. 18:23 - What Ari did after Biden’s debate collapse. 18:35 - Same passage, second source. We are not relying on one outlet for this one. 18:44 - The 2024 Aspen Ideas Festival. Read the guest list. 4. ARI’S ACTUAL LEVERAGE 22:38 - The William Morris client list is the leverage. Not the capital. This is the part most of the coverage misses. 5. MEANWHILE, THE UFC RUNS ON AUTOPILOT 27:46 - A three-million-dollar gate in Sacramento. Oklahoma City does the same. It does not matter where they run it or who is on the card. 6. AND ARI IS ALREADY BUYING THE NEXT THING 31:27 - Six billion dollars for a theatre company holding West End and Broadway houses. Keep this one in mind when we argue he would drop the UFC in a heartbeat. He is not waiting around. 7. THE LAST HOLDOUT 42:16 - Everybody wants this merger done. Everybody. 42:44 - Except Rob Bonta. The lone Attorney General standing in the way, and the reason this is not finished yet. 43:04 and 43:24 - Two more on the California AG thread, for anyone who wants to follow how that office has handled this kind of thing before. 8. WHAT IT ALL MEANS FOR THE UFC 47:04 - The UFC onto Paramount+, expanding into Canada in 2027. Note what is not in this announcement: CBS. 48:19 - The stepladder. Revenue rising year over year across the seven years. This is the $7.7 billion, and it is why every other league in the world spent this offseason demanding a comparable multiple and getting told no. That is the paper trail. The argument is in the audio. Ways to listen to this episode This is a subscriber-only episode. The first six minutes are free for everyone; the full hour is for paid subscribers (but we’re giving away a month free at this link.) PAID SUBSCRIBERS The easy way is the Substack app: https://substack.com/app Install it, sign in with the email address you subscribed with, and the full episode is waiting. Prefer your usual podcast app? Set your private feed up once, and every full episode arrives automatically from then on: 1. Open https://www.themmadraw.com/account 2. Copy the URL under “Private podcast feed” 3. Paste it into Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket Casts, or whatever you use. It’s tied to your account — please don’t share it. Seeing a six-minute version of this episode? That’s the public preview feed. Use your private feed instead. NOT A PAID SUBSCRIBER YET? As promised on the show — the Preston offer gets you a free month. Just open that link; no code to type. It runs for 30 days from when you click it. Full episode, the archive, and the comments: https://www.themmadraw.com/subscribe

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Nate Wilcox, the founder of Bloody Elbow and Zach Arnold, the founder of Fight Opinion explain the game behind the fights, covering the business of MMA, combat sports and a little bit of pro wrestling. www.themmadraw.com

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