Vince McMahon may no longer be part of the professional wrestling industry, but don’t think the embattled WWE founder is going to sit back and waste his remaining years tooling around a palatial palace in Greenwich.
According to a report from Undisputed’s Justin Barrasso, Mr. McMahon attempted to jump back into the world of sports and entertainment by acquiring Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship, the combat sports organization partly owned by former UFC champ Conor McGregor.
In the end, the deal never came to fruition, as the 79-year-old business mogul reportedly wanted complete control over the promotion, a term BKFC president David Feldman was unwilling to accept.
“He’s a great guy, his whole team is great, but the timing wasn’t right for us,” Feldman said of McMahon and his offer. “He’s Vince McMahon. If I were him, I’d want creative control, too. He was awesome, very complimentary, and he was very serious to do business.”
Calling McMahon “a great guy” is probably not the smartest of ideas, considering the slew of horrific acts he’s been accused of committing.
Vince McMahon Almost Acquired the UFC
It’s certainly not the first time the McMahon family has toyed with the idea of buying their way into the combat sports industry. In the early 2000s, McMahon’s son, Shane McMahon, pitched the idea of acquiring the UFC while the fledgling fight promotion was still trying to find its identity.
McMahon ultimately passed, citing concerns about the UFC’s business model, believing that WWE’s way of creating reusable characters was more sustainable than the UFC’s model of relying on individual fighters and their careers.
More than two decades later, both the UFC and WWE are owned by the same company, TKO Group Holdings, following a blockbuster deal in 2023 that saw the UFC’s parent company purchase the sports entertainment juggernaut.
Combined, the WWE and UFC are said to be valued at a whopping $21 billion.
