TKO Hoping For All Star Weekends With SmackDown, UFC PPVs And WWE Premium Live Events Happening In One Weekend

TKO Group are going to look to create all star weekends with the UFC and WWE.

During WrestleMania 39 weekend, the sale was officially announced as Vince had accepted an offer from Endeavor of 21 billion dollars for the company. Now, the merger with the UFC to form a new company, TKO Group has finalized as the company will now start trading on the stock market.

Nick Khan told Bill Simmons on the Bill Simmons podcast when asked about WWE and UFC possibly having events on the same weekend.

“The conversations are just beginning now. Everybody wanted to make sure that we got all the regulatory approvals in place. Department of Justice approval, SEC approval, a couple of international approvals that we needed and obviously, we got all of those. The conversations are happening now. Yes, what everyone envisions is, can you set up an all-star TKO weekend where SmackDown goes on Friday, UFC on Saturday with pay-per-view, and WWE goes with a premium live event on Sunday. Can you do that from the same city? Certainly, a lot of cost efficiencies there in terms of production, but a lot of revenue efficiencies in terms of upside there as well,” 

“Certainly, the fighters and WWE superstars stay separate. Could you have a Ronda Rousey or Brock Lesnar come along who can cross from one to the other? Sure, but that’s a once-in-a-decade type of thing. In terms of production, [UFC Exec VP/Operations & Production] Craig Borsari and [WWE Line Producer] Kevin Dunn, they’ve had a number of conversations on those efficiencies, how it might look, how it might work. Hopefully, we have some news on that in a couple of months.”

“Ideally, what we like, especially if you look at the international expansion of WWE’s premium live events and UFC’s already expansion, you could see a lot of events of ‘WWE is going at 3pm eastern from an international location, UFC is going at 8 eastern domestically,’ or the opposite of that. We like that too because you have two gates, two merchandise, in theory, if you get a government subsidy for the international or domestic show, you have that and boom, both events are right there. By planning in advance, I don’t believe we’ll trip over each other in any way,”

Nick Khan

With UFC and WWE under the same banner following Endeavor’s acquisition of both companies, there is an increased likelihood that the worlds of professional wrestling and mixed-martial arts could also merge.

We will have to wait and see if Nick Khan’s hopes of an “all star” weekend will come to pass.

 Former UFC champions have stepped into the squared circle in the past in some form or another, such as Brock Lesnar, Ronda Rousey, and Daniel Cormier, the latter of which stood in attendance at the stock exchange on September 12 with company executives as the merger was made official.

H/T to Fightful

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