Interesting to note that UFC is valued at $12.1 billion while WWE at just $9.3 billion.
Apparently interest in the WWE is not what it once was.
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Yeah I don't know what to make of this deal. Very interesting to say the least.
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I was amazed to hear this news, even though I was not terribly surprised given the heavy trend of consolidation in "fight-sport" for so many years.
Apparently there has been a heavier cross-over trend associated with those fighters going from UFC and other fight promotions over to WWE.
There is also some cross-over in the audiences and the sharing of interests and resources for branding ventures.
One key difference that will remain in place is that UFC and all professional "mutually-agreed combat" are also regulated and ultimately sanctioned by a government, which in the US is the state in which the fights take place, and indirectly by gambling regulators.
There is no such regulation of WWE, and hey the "E" is for entertainment anyway!
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I wonder if UFC will need to observe kayfabe.
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I had to look this up to understand, and well this is funny to think about as well given the direct synergy between them now.
I doubt it, but I would not be shocked if one day we learn after a fight, the heavy favourite was told to make the pounding of the opponent on the ground more dramatic, bloody and longer so that "we need to give 'em a good show you know."
We saw some of this also in boxing decades ago via top fighters including especially from Ali. But we are far from the 1970s now with video and sound everywhere.
I was personally more into UFC until they did that deal with ESPN in 2019 so as to make it harder to watch the action in the US, and now well, I find more of the fighters to be boring and the side-stories seem a whole lot more manufactured.
Perhaps a kayfabe direction is inevitable for the UFC though I don't know what's changed in that regard if at all already since 2019, and the people would still buy into the UFC because many don't care about sporting integrity anyway.
It is at such a time though that more would question the remaining integrity of the UFC, and of course given that there are gambling stakes on the line unlike with WWE, the scrutiny of regulators would be invited.
I'll disagree and say the presence of the PFL (and Bellator to a lesser extent) means the UFC couldn't risk the suspicion of their product being somehow "staged" because the rival promotions would jump all over it (e.g. the PFL coming out with a new tagline such as "for REAL fighters").
Wrestling obviously doesn't have that issue because fans go into it knowing they are watching fixed outcomes.
I wasn't really old enough to properly remember/appreciate it at the time, but weren't there accusations of fixing/staging outcomes (even if just meant as a joke) in the first incarnation of the XFL purely because of its WWE association?
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Many great points are here and yes at the time there were such allegations though some of that was via the opposition media like especially ESPN, which was genuinely king of cable sports coverage back then.
In reference to that XFL 1.0 experience, I myself don't see staged outcomes arising in UFC due to the host of issues plus just as you cited for sake of the competition.
But to @Hit.em.hard 's fine point, and as in the example I cited above, I would not be surprised to learn of the UFC staging parts of real fights to make them more "entertaining."
Of course the UFC would only do that as well if they can avoid running afoul of gambling regulators much as did boxing through the 00's, though that was a different world before the UFC and MMA eclipsed boxing in most of the developed world.
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All I want to know is why is Vince McMahon looking like a villain from 1930’s movies ?
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