Yesterday it was widely reported that the UFC had been sold for an eye-popping $4.2 billion to “a group consisting of WME-IMG, the Dalian Wanda Group, The Kraft Group and Tencent Holdings.”
Today, according to UFC Vice President of Public Relations Dave Sholler, those reports are completely untrue. Just like when they denied that Brock Lesnar was returning, which he is. (Just sayin’.)
Reports MMAjunkie…
“FloCombat.com’s report indicating that the UFC has been sold is false,” Sholler told MMAjunkie. “We’ve communicated that to our staff members tonight via an internal memo.”
MMAjunkie obtained the email sent to all UFC employees denying the legitimacy of the FloCombat.com report and signed by UFC co-owner and CEO Lorenzo Fertitta.
“A report today by FloCombat.com indicating that the company has been sold is false,” the email read. “This follows other false speculation in the press recently.
“Such misrepresentation of facts in the media negatively impacts our business, staff members and athletes. We have instructed our attorneys to investigate and take all appropriate legal actions against the parties publishing and contributing to these false stories.
“With International Fight Week and the historic UFC 200 rapidly approaching, we look forward to once again delivering a series of events that our fans won’t soon forget. We appreciate your hard work, diligence and commitment, and thank you for your focus as we continue to take the sport to new heights.”
Now we could just be dealing with semantics here as the UFC could have reached an agreement to sell, but has yet to officially change hands. Or, the whole thing could never materialize at all.
As we know, the UFC does NOT like having any of their news broken by anyone but themselves, so I guess we will all just have to wait and see how this plays out.
Related: A Time Line Of Brock Lesnar Returning To The UFC