AEW owner Tony Khan set the record straight regarding his reported interest in considering buying the Bellator MMA promotion. Ariel Helwani reported on Wednesday’s edition of The MMA Hour that there were a few interested parties in possibly buying the mixed martial arts promotion, specifically naming The Professional Fighting League (PFL), Liberty Media and The Khan Family (Tony Khan and his father, Shad Khan) as groups that had “looked into” the promotion. He then noted, “to what degree is unclear.” Khan was asked about that during a media conference call on Thursday while promoting the Forbidden Door pay-per-view and denied any conversations with or interest in buying Bellator.
Videos by ComicBook.com
“I was surprised to see that report,” Khan said. “I haven’t had any conversations with them about that. I don’t know what that was about. My father hasn’t had any conversations with them either. I’m not even sure who you talk to (about a sale) I don’t even know who owns the promotion. Is Scott Coker the owner, the president? I’m not sure. I’m familiar with Bellator. I’m familiar with MMA. I’ve never worked professionally in the space, other than having some stars from UFC appear at times in AEW. I saw that report, and there’s really nothing to that.”
Prior to Endeavor announcing it would be merging The UFC with WWE into a new company called TKO Group, the Khans were named as potential bidders to buy WWE while it was in sale negotiations. Obviously, any talks between the two sides didn’t progress.
“I am interested in the news that there is potentially a sales process and certainly, I think we’ve shown, when there are acquisitions and transactions, we’re capable of making the big purchases, whether my dad steps up with the (Jacksonville) Jaguars or Fulham FC in the Premier League and he’s done such a great job building up the club and putting resources into it and we’re playing football at a high level,”ย Khan said in a radio interview back in January.ย
“With AEW, we’ve shown that we can build a company. Even when I purchased Ring of Honor, that’s a very different thing than WWE, but Ring of Honor is a company with 20 years of history and I really have enjoyed running it and we’ve shown that we’re at all time highs in terms of every business metric since we relaunched it and it’s only going to get better. AEW is my main focus, but certainly, when that news is out there, it’s very interesting,” he added.ย
