The Ultimate Fighting Championship and World Wrestling
Entertainment recently
completed a merger to come under the banner of a new company,
TKO Holdings. UFC parent company Endeavor will hold 51% of shares
in the new company while WWE stakeholders will have 49%.
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While both promotions will continue to function independently, UFC
senior executive vice president and chief operating officer
Lawrence Epstein has a goal of merging the two vastly different fan
bases at some point.
“Where we want to get is where every UFC fan is a WWE fan and every
WWE fan is a UFC fan,” Epstein told
ESPN.
However, UFC president Dana White couldn’t disagree more with
Epstein, labeling the latter’s statement as one of the “dumbest of
all time.” White, who was made UFC chief executive officer (CEO)
with the merger, noted that the fan bases of pro wrestling and
unscripted cage fighting are fundamentally different.
“Lawrence, I love you. One of the dumbest statements of all time,”
White said during a media session following Dana White’s Contender
Series. “I don’t know why he said that. I don’t even know what to
say to that. No. There is some crossover, some people like WWE,
some people like UFC, and some people like both. I don’t think
there’s ever going to be a day where we turn every UFC fan into a
WWE fan, or every WWE fan into a UFC fan. What’s beautiful about
the synergy between these two fan bases, is they are very
completely opposite… Maybe he was misquoted, I hope that was the
case, because I couldn’t disagree with him more.”