Your bag is empty.
The day after U.S. District Judge Richard Boulware II gave his final approval for the $375 million settlement in Le v. Zuffa in February 2025, the decade-long class action antitrust lawsuit filed by former fighters against the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), the promotion’s owner, Ari Emanuel, made a guest appearance on the Pat McAfee Show, his attention already set elsewhere.
Sitting across from the host, the CEO of Endeavor grinned wide as McAfee and company praised him for his impressive business acumen, comparing him approvingly to Entourage’s Ari Gold, for whom he served as inspiration. (“By far, the greatest character in that show,” said McAfee, who, earlier this year, hired Emanuel as his agent.) The compliments seemed to put Emanuel at ease, his answers candid in the presence of admirers. When co-host A.J. Hawk inquired about future ventures, he didn’t hesitate to share his interest in entering the world of boxing. “Can you revive boxing? Where is boxing right now, I guess, compared to 20 years ago?” Hawk asked. Emanuel responded, in an eight-second soundbite that would reverberate across the combat sports community for the next year and a half: “Well, I think the Ali Act hurt it. Hopefully—who knows what’s going to happen with the Ali Act.”
Outside the podcast studio, he quote drew the immediate attention of journalists and advocates alike. Many of them had been following the developments of Le v. Zuffa (and its successors, Johnson v. Zuffa, Davis v. Zuffa, and Cirkunovs v. Zuffa) and were thus quicker to call his comments out: “Is Ari Emanuel on the verge of monopolizing boxing?” MMA podcaster and writer Nate Wilcox asked outright in The MMA Draw. They sounded alarm bells—on Twitter, on Substack, on YouTube—about another possible industry takeover by the same person whose organization has been in court since 2014, having been accused of anticompetitive conduct in mixed martial arts (MMA).
The Ali Act, the colloquial term for the two pieces of legislation—the Professional Boxing Safety Act and the Muhammad Ali Boxing Reform Act—is a federal framework created to protect boxers and the integrity of boxing. The 1996 Professional Boxing Safety Act addressed the lack of a regulatory structure for the sport in the country, mandating safety measures for competitors like medical personnel at fights. The Muhammad Ali Boxing Reform Act of 2000 focused on unfair and anticompetitive practices within the sport, like nixing coercive contracts and requiring transparency around pay, policies, and other relevant information. Most importantly, it prohibited conflict of interest between sanctioning organizations, promoters, and managers. Critics say these acts are still too vague, leaving some enforcement capabilities up to states.
The Ali Act provided professional boxers with such protections that the advocacy group Mixed Martial Arts Fighters Association (MMAFA) pushed for its expansion in 2016 and 2017 to include mixed martial artists, who themselves have watched a rapidly evolving—and narrowing—industry, dominated by a single entity: the UFC. (In 2012, MMAFA founder Rob Maysey, with the encouragement of former fighter Carlos Newton, started the process of putting together an antitrust lawsuit against the organization; two years later, the first of five complaints that would later be consolidated to Le v. Zuffa was filed.)
In addition to the UFC, Emanuel’s Endeavor—rebranded in March 2025 as WME Group after going private—owns the WWE and Zuffa Boxing, a joint venture between WME Group subsidiary, TKO, and the Saudi Arabian Sela Sport. Zuffa Boxing’s leadership includes Saudi Arabia’s Chairman of the General Entertainment Authority, Turki Alalshikh, and UFC president and CEO Dana White. About a month after Zuffa Boxing’s was announced, Reps. Brian Jack (R-Ga.) and Sharice Davids (D-Kan.) co-sponsored the Muhammad Ali American Boxing Revival Act in July 2025, which proposed amendments to the existing federal law. (The legislation is currently working its way through Congress, where a House and Senate version each exist.) Proponents say the legislation is a much-needed effort to modernize the sport and open boxers up to more financial opportunity.
Critics, however, say the act could open boxing up to the monopolistic and exploitative allegations the UFC faces. Backed by TKO, the Revival Act introduced a new section for unified boxing organizations. Described as an “alternative system,” a unified boxing organization can promote its own events and maintain its own title and ranking system, thereby eliminating the current boundary enforced between promoters and sanctioning organizations. In other words, it would not be unlike how the UFC operates today.
In an interview with Playboy, Combat Sports Law author Erik Magraken challenged the bill’s title, saying “the only thing it’s going to revive is boxer exploitation.” Magraken, who works as a combat sports regulatory lawyer and a licensed combat sports judge, says the damage the Revival Act could wreak might take generations to undo.
To reel in current and up-and-coming boxers, a unified boxing organization could offer support services available only to its roster: training and rehabilitation equipment and facilities (like the UFC’s own Performance Institute), an insurance policy, and a medical coordinator whose job it is to ensure that boxers meet the appropriate medical and licensing requirements for a covered bout. The versions passed by the House and the other presented recently by the Senate include a minimum per-round payment of $200, a guaranteed match every six months or compensation “not less than 10 times the minimum payment of $200,” and a contract limit. Add to that the recent sign-on bonuses offered by Zuffa Boxing—such as the $15 million one-fight contract that snatched Conor Benn away from Eddie Hearn’s Matchroom Boxing promotion—and it would be reasonable to ask why anyone wouldn’t be tempted to be part of this proposed system.
It’s the “Trojan horse” approach, International Boxing Hall of Famer and Golden Boy Promotions founder Oscar De La Hoya told Playboy: a combination of factors so enticing, it’s easy for anyone to miss the fine print that actually outlines a “terrible, terrible deal”—especially if they don’t know what they’re looking for. “You’re basically a commodity for their bottom line.”
Magraken agrees. “The new promotion, up front, will create opportunities and probably even overpay a lot of talent to get in the door,” he said. “And that’s actually monopolist behavior, right? You come into the market, you overpay, you get legitimacy, and then you can get market control—and then you can start doing all the nasty stuff, like the coercive contracts and pay suppression.”
It’s possible that the UBO system could benefit new boxers by offering them benefits and support they wouldn’t get in the current system. But, as The Guardian reports, it also sets up a potential pay-to-play system. A smaller organization trying to establish a UBO likely couldn’t compete with one, say, backed by the Saudi government. And, there’s concern that the Revival Act could undermine key protections from the Professional Boxing Safety Act, which protect boxers from coercive contracts, require financial disclosures from promoters, and put in place a firewall between promoters and managers. In the Revival Act, unified boxing organizations could seemingly act in undesirable ways—so long as they meet the health and safety standards, as outlined by the Professional Boxing Safety Act.
As the wider combat sports community holds its breath for the next steps, Emanuel remains as busy—and seemingly as unbothered—as ever. Through his agency WME—not to be confused with WME Group, which is the parent company to all—he has direct access to talent from every imaginable sector of the entertainment business, as well as his former client and current president, Donald Trump, with whom he’s maintained a close relationship. Through TKO Group, he owns the premier professional wrestling organization and the premier mixed martial arts promotion, the latter of which produced a fight card—the first of its kind—at the White House for an early celebration of the country’s semiquincentennial. And that’s just a fraction of his holdings, some of which include platforms likeFrieze Art Fair, the Miami Open, the Nike Melbourne Marathon, the U.S. Open of Surfing, the Melbourne International Flower and Garden Show, TodayTix, among others.
Now let’s rewind further back, before Emanuel walked out to applause, when McAfee was still trying to describe him. I think,” the host says, looking at his panel of friends, “this man runs the world.” Not yet—but the Revival Act could make him one step closer.