The WWE and UFC merger may have shocked a lot of fans, but George Barrios says that idea was floating around years before TKO was ever a thing.
Speaking on the POST Wrestling podcast, the former WWE executive said that once WWE hit a major growth stage, he and Vince McMahon started looking at what the company’s next giant move could be. WWE was already rolling, but Barrios believed it could become even more valuable by buying or combining with another major property. One name came up years before TKO existed: UFC.
“We had talked about once we had hit, you know, escape velocity, and we were a rocket ship, the thing I had talked to Vince, I’m like, ‘Look, the next big stage, we’re going to keep growing. We’ve got an amazing business, there’s more to do, but there’s the opportunity to either buy someone, and we had talked about UFC, right? Another business, buy someone, and we run a bigger thing because I won’t bore you with it, but we think that’s more valuable. We think actually, I rarely say this, but 1 + 1 is more than two.’”
Barrios then made it even more interesting. Back in 2018 and 2019, he did not just think WWE and UFC could be linked together. He thought WWE had the better team to run the whole thing.
“So, we had talked about that. And by the way, in the case of UFC, I’d always said, ‘Look, we have a better management team than they do, so we should probably run that.’ That was back in ’18, ’19.”
That is a pretty wild thing to hear now, because WWE and UFC did eventually end up under the same roof with TKO Group Holdings. The difference is WWE did not buy UFC, and WWE did not end up running the combined operation. Endeavor made the power play, and WWE became part of the new TKO setup.
Still, Barrios made it clear this was not some random idea that came out of nowhere in 2023. WWE had already kicked around the UFC idea years earlier, and at least in his mind, WWE should have been the side calling the shots.
What do you think about George Barrios saying WWE talked about UFC years before TKO happened? Let us know in the comments and leave your feedback below.
