The PFL has merged with Jake Paul’s Most Valuable Promotions, and PFL CEO John Martin is thrilled with what comes next.
Earlier this week, news broke that the PFL and MVP were merging their two brands under the MVP banner, creating one combat sports promotion for boxing and MMA. While the PFL won’t officially rebrand events under the MVP banner until 2027, Jake Paul and Nakisa Bidarian were at the PFL New York show on Friday, with the promotion talking about what this merger will mean for the future. And at the post-fight press conference, John Martin laid out how it came to happen.
“No apprehension. For me, it was 100 percent, let’s do this,” Martin told reporters at the PFL New York post-fight presser when asked if he had any trepidation about the merger. “I will tell you, Nakisa reached out to me first, but I was already planning on reaching out to him after their May 16 event. Because as a business person, I’m interested in growing and accelerating the growth of what has been PFL. And in order to do that, we have to lift the brand by getting more attention on our athletes, and we have to fix our U.S. distribution. And I thought if we did those two things, we would be able to really accelerate.
“However, if you look at MVP, what they have and what they’ve been able to do, they grab attention better than we did at the PFL. Jake Paul as an athlete is unique, as a promoter he’s unique, as a content creator he’s unique, and whether you like Jake or you don’t like Jake, you pay attention to Jake. …
“He is a unicorn. He’s an incredible individual. If somebody said to me five years ago, this young man could disrupt the world of boxing, I would take the other side of that bet all day long. Look at what he’s done.
“And MVP is only five years old. Now you look at MVP together with PFL; we are the only organization, at this point, that will allow athletes — You want to box? Great. You want to fight MMA? You want future crossover type of opportunities? Great. We want to put the best fights and the best events together for the benefit of our fans. And I absolutely am convinced that this merger is going to be a huge accelerant in our ability to do just that.”
Martin took over leadership of the PFL a year ago, and since then, he’s been open about some struggles he’s had, particularly with the level of support he feels their broadcast partner, ESPN, has given them. With PFL in the market for a new deal next year, fans quickly speculated that the merger with MVP could open doors to Netflix, which has held several MVP events already, including its debut MMA event earlier this year. And Martin admits that’s a possibility.
“That was one of the attractive elements, to me, of getting together with MVP,” Martin said. “They have now put on, I believe, four very, very successful events with Netflix. They don’t have a long-term, exclusive relationship with Netflix, so we’ll be sitting down and speaking with them to find out what they want. But for our fighters, being on a fantastic platform and being distributed in front of as many people, in as many places, in as many ways as possible is gonna be huge for us. So, Netflix isn’t the only game in town. I’d say over the last 24 hours, no fewer than six U.S. broadcasters have hit me up and said, ‘This is big. This is huge. Let’s start talking.’ So that’s going to be a very busy part of our work for the next several months.”
But Martin was also quick to add that just because they’ve had a rough relationship with ESPN thus far, things still might change. Another benefit of the MVP merger is that MVP recently signed a deal with ESPN to broadcast women’s boxing, and Martin says that could reopen lines of communication there.
“I’ve expressed frustration, which I stand behind, by the lack of commitment and support that ESPN has been willing to give us this year, but I don’t dismiss ESPN as a massive entity with a fantastic platform,” Martin said. “They have an output deal with MVPW, women’s boxing, which has just started. They seem to be showing them more love than they have with us, the PFL. I’m hopeful that with this announcement, possibly we can go back and maybe they’ll rethink what their commitment is, and that will open up a new line of communication. I’ve got great respect for Jimmy Pitaro and the team there, but I stand by what I said. They just haven’t done much for us this year.”
Of course, for any MMA promotion, the issue always comes down to the UFC. While PFL and MVP merging creates a potentially big brand in the space, the UFC dominates the MMA landscape. But Martin believes that this merger allows MVP to truly offer MMA fighters another option besides just the UFC.
“One of the things that really drew me with admiration to MVP was Jake and Nakisa’s very early and consistent commitment to fighters,” Martin said. “And for us to differentiate ourselves from the leader, we have to be able to appeal to elite talent and the fighters. And equitable pay, maximum visibility, and providing maximum opportunities to the fighters has been critical at the PFL. …
“I get asked questions all the time, ‘Are you just a feeder league for the UFC?’ because they’re just going to come in and cherry-pick every athlete that they want. That’s not true. We’re going to be able, I believe, to offer fighters a different path. One where they will have more opportunities to do what they want. Don’t discount just the mere fact that if we’re talking to an athlete and they express a desire to do boxing and MMA, we’re open to that. We’ll talk about that. Whatever is good for them, whatever is good for the promotion, we’re just going to do.
“So, the ability to give them a platform where they can become famous, and they can fulfill the goals, the desires that they have, that’s the goal.”
And while it’s early days in the partnership, Martin is optimistic about where this new venture is headed.
“I’ll tell you, there was not one conversation that we had when we started talking where there was a strategic difference of opinion,” Martin said. “I think Nakisa and then Jake recognized the same thing that I did, which is that together, we can really accelerate and fundamentally change this sport. That’s a huge ambition. That’s the ambition we have. That’s why I joined the PFL.
“Everything I’ve done in my career has been at big scale, leading big companies, big brands, growing big brands. Combat sports has unlimited runway. Global, instantly recognizable, no borders. There’s a huge opportunity for us, and we’re gonna go after it hard.”
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