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. 6d ago

    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.

  2. 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.

  3. 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

  4. 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

  5. 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.

  6. 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

  7. 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

  8. Aug 20

    Mad Squabbles MMA History: BJJ vs. Luta Livre

    This week’s podcast with Nate & Zach is all about discussing the very complex history of Brazilian fight styles beyond the carefully curated Gracie family business narrative on display at the early UFC events and the marketing of nascent MMA in the US and Japan. As the UFC became more popular in the United States and the Gracies transitioned to Vale Tudo Japan & PRIDE, many fighters and hardcore fans began learning about the genealogy of Brazilian martial arts. As Zach noted in our most recent Ken Shamrock podcast article, most Japanese fight fans were familiar with Masahiko Kimura — the judoka who beat Helio Gracie in 1951. However, Japanese fans were well aware of Kimura because of a double-cross involving Rikidozan in 1954 that forever changed Japanese fight sport history. Helio and Kimura would be key icons in the marketing story behind the Kazushi Sakuraba vs. Royce Gracie 2000 Pride marathon match at the Tokyo Dome. But that’s a story for another day; we’ve got a lot of history to catch up on. Long before the UFC, there was a battle in Brazil for the heart and soul of fight sport. There were multiple Gracie family branches with competing interests. The Gracies were closely aligned with various right-wing government administrations. Catch wrestling (known in Brazil as Luta Livre), judo, Capoeira, Muay Thai, and other styles were confronted by elite BJJ talent. Sometimes winning, sometimes losing. There were also internal BJJ rivalries that captured fans' attention, like the Gracie family feud with their star pupil, Waldemar Santana, who beat Helio and then lost to Carlson. But when Luta Livre competitors learned judo, they became a real threat to Gracie BJJ, and stars like Euclydes “Tatu” Hatem and later Ivan Gomes dominated the sport. But the problem in Brazil throughout the 20th century was the failure to extend past short-term spectacles. A few matches a decade would capture popular attention, but then the fad would pass. It was all too much freak show, too little sport. The one-year lifespan of the Gracie’s Vale Tudo TV show Heróis do Ringue from 1959-1960 was typical. Initial strong ratings imploded when a submission hold broke an arm on live TV and the whole thing got canceled. The battle exploded again in the 1980s when Rickson Gracie established public dominance. First in his fights against Casimiro de Nascimento Martins aka Rei Zulu, and second in his videotaped beach confrontation with Luta Livre leader Hugo Duarte. The real target was Marco Ruas, but Ruas wanted weeks to train and Rickson already had a ticket purchased to follow his brother Rorion to Hollywood. The irony of Ruas becoming UFC champion at UFC 7 after Royce Gracie exited the UFC was rather thick. The elites vs. the working class. Generations of tradition vs. cross-training in multiple disciplines. When you go back in time and look at what happened in Brazil in the 20th Century, it truly was the melting pot of combat sports and immigration. It all traces back to Kanō Jigorō, the founder of judo, who sent students like Mitsuyo Maeda to the Western Hemisphere to challenge catch wrestlers on the carnival circuit that ranged from Alaska to Brazil. This week’s edition of the Mad Squabbles MMA show goes in-depth on much of the Brazilian fight history that has been revealed to the English-speaking world in the last 10 years and how new archival information changed the narrative of what was truly evolving in fight sport. The key fighting event this week’s podcast is based on was a 1991 Gracie BJJ vs. Luta Livre 3-on-3 event called Desafio. It was the war to settle the score. Luta Livre lost that day, but Marco Ruas and other multi-disciplinary fighters would make sure that Vale Tudo would soon rule the MMA world. It didn’t take very long before the next generation of monsters from Chute Boxe would dominate in PRIDE and thrill hundreds of thousands of spectators with legendary performances still talked about to this day. We’ll be back to talk about the entry of freestyle wrestlers like Dan Severn, Mark Coleman, and Mark Frye in our next historical episode. Ways to listen to the Mad Squabbles (MMA Draw) podcast We’ve been giving the wrong instructions for how to do this so apologies! Ways to listen to the Mad Squabbles (MMA Draw) podcast PAID SUBSCRIBERS — START HERE Your full episodes don’t come through Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Those apps carry our public feed, which has only free previews of paid episodes. Full episodes come through your own private feed, which is unique to you. The easy way — the Substack app. Install it, sign in with the email address you subscribed with, and every full episode is waiting. Nothing to copy or paste: https://substack.com/app Or add your private feed to the podcast app you already use: 1. Open your subscription settings: https://www.themmadraw.com/account 2. Scroll to “Private podcast feed” and click “Set up podcast” 3. Copy the feed URL. It’s tied to your account — please don’t share it. 4. Paste it into your app: Apple Podcasts — Library, then the ••• in the top right, then “Add a Show by URL” Overcast — the + button, then “Add URL” Pocket Casts — paste the URL into the search bar, then tap + Your private feed link is also in the welcome email you got when you subscribed. FREE LISTENERS Free episodes, plus previews of the paid ones: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id984162015 Spotify: RSS: https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/1407790.rss Paid subscriber and seeing 12-minute episodes here? That’s the preview feed — use your private feed above 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. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.themmadraw.com/subscribe

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About

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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