Tony Khan and his father, Shad Khan, currently own the Jacksonville Jaguars, the Fulham FC soccer club and the All Elite Wrestling pro wrestling promotion. But it sounds like the father-son duo might have been looking to add a major MMA promotion to their portfolio. According to Ariel Helwani via The MMA Hour, Bellator MMA is currently in sales talks with “multiple players” potentially interested. He specifically named the Professional Fight League (PFL), Liberty Media (owners of Formula 1 Racing, The Atlanta Braves MLB franchise and SiriusXM Radio) and the Khan family. Helwani pointed out that he’s unsure how far along those sales talk were.
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Prior to Endeavor announcing a merger between The UFC and WWE, the Khans were named as an interested party in buying the WWE while it was in sale negotiations earlier this year. The new UFC & WWE company will be called TKO Group Holdings and will be under the Endeavor corporate umbrella if completed.
“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,” Khan said back in January.
“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.
“I can’t speak to that except to say that I was interested. It will also be very interesting to see what happens with that sale,” Khan said in May after the merger had been announced. “Certainly, in many ways, it’s a big positive to the pro wrestling business.”
AEW returns to pay-per-view this Sunday with the Forbidden Door crossover event with New Japan Pro-Wrestling. Stay tuned for full coverage of the event!
