Jeff Jarrett comments on combined PPV weekends for the WWE and UFC.
During WrestleMania 39 weekend, the sale was officially announced as Vince had accepted an offer from Endeavor to buy the WWE, with Endeavor planning to merge the WWE and UFC into one 21 billion dollar 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.
Speaking on My World with Jeff Jarrett, the WWE Hall of Famer discussed the overlap between WWE and UFC fans and how double PPV weekends could be beneficial.
“This is what’s bizarre. I thought Epstein’s point was, we want to create synergies on mega weekends, pay-per-view weekends, where you have a Friday night event for UFC and a Saturday night event for WWE, or a Saturday/Sunday, whatever it might be. I thought, not only yes, but hell yes. I believe, for the majority, it is two separate fanbases. But you have one load in, one up and down, I’m talking about from a production point of view. You’re in one arena, you have the synergies of finance and HR and administrative and accounting and all that kind of stuff. Okay, well, their place of work is in one town, not two. So there’s a lot of situations where I think there’s an upside, and I also think you can just own the town. Go see UFC Friday, go see WWE Saturday because it really is, for the most part, two different audiences. I think we’re gonna see that. I’m not sure exactly how that’s gonna flush out, but I’m not gonna say a Mania weekend, a SummerSlam, or a Survivor Series, the big four, so to speak, I don’t think it’s gonna happen on those weekends, but let’s just take Payback in Pittsburgh, I could see a Friday-Saturday with that because there’s so many events. I think it can create a whole new kind of branding initiative with a lot of upside, and you can have the occasional, we’ll call it a fan-fest, where you have it all under one off. I think there’s a lot of ways to monetize that. I think it’s great for the industry as a whole. I think it’s great for AEW, I think it’s great for any and everything, and I don’t put them in the same bucket. I think it’s great for MMA, and I think it’s great for professional wrestling,”
“I think we’re gonna see it. In a lot of ways, I’ve said this going back three generations, in professional wrestling, wink-wink, we control wins and losses and presentations and storylines and everything that goes with it. In the UFC, they don’t have that luxury, so to speak. So it is always a different game. It literally is. What are we going to promote? Because they don’t create Conor McGregors every day. You gotta capture that lighting in a bottle, whereas you don’t create a John Cena overnight, but man, you can create one. That’s what’s really cool. You can utilize past stars in such a monstrous way,”
Jeff Jarrett
We will have to wait and see how the wrestling business will continue to change and evolve with the takeover being completed and TKO Group having control of two juggernauts in the UFC and WWE.
H/T to Fightful for transcription
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