Zach Arnold

2 weeks ago | themmadraw.com | Zach Arnold |Nate Wilcox

How do they do it? How is UFC getting customers to pay MSG-level fight prices at arenas across the world for matchmaking that, until recently, was absolutely bottom-of-the-barrel in terms of fight quality? UFC 317 at T-Mobile Arena with Ilia Topuria vs. Charles Oliveira is a perfect example. It’s hard to get a floor seat for less than $1,000. Cage side seats are thousands of dollars. And that event is likely going to sell out in short order. Same story in locales like New Orleans and Chicago.

1 month ago | themmadraw.com | Zach Arnold |Nate Wilcox

Current time: 0:00 / Total time: -15:04Audio playback is not supported on your browser. Please upgrade. After one of the darkest promotional weekends in the modern history of boxing, what’s next for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia with their new TKO Boxing partners? We have questions. Lots of them. And we have a lot more questions after reading Thomas Hauser’s Guardian article detailing the politics behind the Times Square fiasco.

1 month ago | themmadraw.com | Zach Arnold |Nate Wilcox

Current time: 0:00 / Total time: -22:25Audio playback is not supported on your browser. Please upgrade. You didn’t think he was going away quietly, did you? The man who settled his high-profile investigation with the Securities & Exchange Commission after getting exiled from the kingdom he built? Ari Emanuel has extinguished many friends and foes but professional wrestling is a different animal altogether and future conditions may precipitate a return for one Vince Kennedy McMahon.

1 month ago | themmadraw.com | Zach Arnold |Nate Wilcox

We told you so!Since moving to Substack in 2023, The MMA Draw has heavily focused our coverage of fight monopoly TKO on their lust for taxpayer cash. Government contracts. TKO executives were explicit in their aim to dramatically increase the amount of revenue they extracted from city, state, and national governments, and true to form, they haven’t disappointed their investors. Their increasing ability to hoover up cash from local governments is pretty amazing, but that’s what value extractors do.

1 month ago | themmadraw.com | Zach Arnold |Nate Wilcox

Current time: 0:00 / Total time: -24:56Audio playback is not supported on your browser. Please upgrade. UFC 314 was heralded as a card worthy of hardcore attention. Finally, a modern UFC fight card that was respectable. Intriguingly, early Google Trends revealed good but not great numbers — which may or may not serve as a form of confirmation bias that if you’re into the current UFC product, you’re into it. If you’re not, you’re not.