According to MMAJunkie, UFC President Dana White told the Associated Press fans should not expect major changes to the product despite the promotion’s recent impending merger with WWE.
White also said to AP that he predicts UFC and WWE forming a new publicly traded company, it will increase both brands’ resources, alliances, sponsorships and beyond.
The merger is reportedly has been causing a lot of speculation about whether there will be some type of crossover between UFC and WWE. White also indicated that there will be changes on the backend with the two companies but that UFC will remain the same.
“I’m sure better deals will be made with the arenas…“Alliances will be made. Deals and alliances and sponsorships, the list goes on and on. The business side is really where you’re going to see a big difference. As far as the performance and what we do, you’ll never see a difference in that….There won’t really be any type of crossover. Yeah, Brock Lesnar, who wanted to come over to the UFC and test himself became the heavyweight champion. He’s that good of an athlete. Then, you had Ronda Rousey who was a world champion here and then went over to WWE and tested herself there and became a world champion. That type of synergy will still exist.”
“The thing with this new entity that we’re building, if you look at what we’ve done at the UFC and we continue to do what we do over here, the WWE does what they do and continues to do what they do, and Endeavor and Ari continue to do what they do, it’s just a very powerful company with a ton of great synergy…There are a lot of great things that we can help WWE with to help their business grow. There’s a lot of things. Because when you look at what Endeavor and UFC has done together, we sold for $4.025 billion. Now, the company is worth $12.03 billion. There’s a lot of things that we can add to WWE with the synergies that we’ve created with WME and UFC.”
The merger is expected to be finalized by the end of 2023.