Issue 224
December 2025
From Paramount+ to kayfabe, Harry Williams breaks down how WWE’s influence is already reshaping the UFC through fighters like Oban Elliott.
January 1 usually marks the beginning of New Year’s resolutions that implode by February. For the UFC and its parent company, TKO Group Holdings, it signals something far more long-lasting and positive. From January 24, 2026, Paramount+ becomes the exclusive home of UFC events in the United States and Latin America, launching the partnership with UFC 324 live from T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. For the first time in the promotion’s history, every marquee numbered event and all UFC Fight Night cards will be available as part of a standard streaming subscription, with no pay-per-view barrier. Thirteen numbered events are already scheduled for 2026, and Paramount has committed to a full-scale 360-degree marketing campaign across its entire media empire to push the UFC. The UFC isn’t changing broadcasters. Instead, it is stepping deeper into an ecosystem built for year-round live action, storytelling, and scale. All the right metrics backs the confidence. As of late 2025, TKO Group Holdings was valued at $38.8 billion, following a 61.7 percent rise in its share price over the preceding 12 months. Strong growth from both the UFC and WWE underpinned those gains because they both know how to tell stories that we love and engage with. And while the UFC remains unscripted and unforgiving, the world around it is becoming louder, slicker, and far more intentional about how the biggest stars are portrayed to the public. Whether you prefer Kayfabe or not to Kayfabe, the crossover is already here because it’s what so many UFC fighters have grown up on. With his hand raised and a tear in his eye in his UFC debut, ‘The Welsh Gangster’ Oban Elliott recited Ric Flair’s legendary 1992 speech that said this was the greatest moment in his life. Elliott shared that sentiment, but that celebration, along with the pageantry, had been a lifetime in the making and tells a much bigger story.
HIS FIRST LOVE
While the UFC was still building its fanbase, the WWE had already solved the attention equation. A paper in The Sport Journal found their success wasn’t built on spectacle, but on precise audience segmentation and relentless brand storytelling. The WWE’s promotions resonated differently with fans based on their age, income, ethnicity, and lifestyle, enabling the company to tailor its messaging, characters, and platforms with surgical precision. WWE has always sold continuity and storylines where long-term attention is rewarded, which is the kind of marketing intelligence the UFC is now positioned to borrow without scripting a single punch. It helps that so many UFC fighters also adore WWE because long before the Octagon, fighters like Oban Elliott’s first love was professional wrestling. Hulk Hogan. Brock Lesnar. The Rock. They were his earliest inspirations and are why he loves entertaining the crowd.
“It's just polluted my brain for as long as I can remember,” he told Fighters Only. “I always say you grow older, but you never grow up. I was just captivated by the feedback from the crowd, the walkout, climbing the ropes, and lifting their arms up. I was like, ‘Wow, I've got to be a wrestler. I've got to be a wrestler. I’m an MMA fighter now, but that love of the stage has never left me. When my music hits, I feel like I become a wrestler. I see all of this as a work, a performance. Stepping through the curtain is everything. That allows me to become the guy you see on TV. It’s just me, cranked up to 11. I remember, I was 15, I fought on a kickboxing show, where I got a walkout. I was performing, working the crowd. I was talking to the crowd as I was clinching with my opponent. I was 15, and all that time watching wrestling came to the forefront. It took over. The persona. The performers. All of it. It's just captivated me my whole life, and now I get to f**ing do it on the biggest stages.”
BRUSHING SHOULDERS WITH THE BEST
It’s every kid’s fantasy to peek behind the curtain of pro wrestling, and in 2024, Elliott was invited to WWE to support legendary wrestler CM Punk’s storyline, one of his all-time heroes.
“TKO flew me out for Bash In Berlin,” he says. “They had me backstage doing this, like, a bit of content with CM Punk as an ally of his before his match with Drew McIntyre, which was mad. I was just talking to Punk beforehand, but once the cameras turned on, even before the cameras were on, he was working. I was thinking to myself, ‘Oh, my god, I've gotta work here. The producers told me I did great, but it was wild to witness that change. I was backstage, I was by Gorilla Position talking to Triple H. I told him I’d love to wrestle for WWE one day. He told me to keep kicking ass in the UFC, and one day I’ll be welcomed down to the Performance Center when the time is right. Punk told me to focus on MMA but use WWE as a retirement plan. The next stage of life. Don't worry about it. I'm confident I can switch over one day. It’s just wild to me now that the main guys I loved growing up were Michael Bisping, Chael Sonnen, and CM Punk - and now I have all their numbers in my phone, and I can text them whenever I want. I’d have never imagined that in a million years. It’s bizarre.”
WRESTLING IS LIFE
The stories that are spun in sports entertainment help fans live through the characters. Elliott believes wrestling mirrors the world we live in. Stories take unexpected turns. There are rollercoasters of emotions every year. He knows it better than most. He lost his father in 2005, and almost had his career destroyed after being diagnosed with Wolf-Parkinson-White Syndrome.
“Wrestling is life, man,” he smiles. “It’s the ups and downs. Throughout my whole life, I’ve leaned on wrestling as a source of inspiration and drama. It’s the blueprint. It’s in the script that if you do fall, you can come back, and who doesn’t love a good comeback? There’s nothing stopping anyone doing so in real life. I’m proof of the saying that bad times don’t last, but bad guys do!”
What 2026 is likely to offer fans isn’t a different UFC, but one they can engage with more. There will never be a scripted punch, and fights will always be unforgiving, but we might see the fighters encouraged to adopt a broader perspective. That’s the lesson that fighters like Elliott keep circling back to. Wrestling isn’t about pretending. It’s about recognizing a rhythm of real life. There are rises, losses, and interruptions that impact almost everything. His own story fits that blueprint. There’s loss, challenges, threats, and the wins that make all the struggle worth it. Wrestling taught him that falling isn’t failure, it’s just a paragraph in the script. Under TKO Group Holding’s plans as they expand into all combat sports from jiu-jitsu to boxing, we’ll see how the UFC isn’t playing by the WWE’s script but will certainly know how to let it breathe. You can expect more fighters who understand that the bad times don’t last, but the ones who survive them do. Now that’s a resolution worth sticking to and the fans can look forward to the ride.
