The fight business in 3 minutes, every morning.

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 13, 2026

🥊 The Main Event

Hearn says TKO went behind his back to buy into AJ-Fury — and AJ said no (Oct 12) · BUSINESS

Eddie Hearn told Ariel Helwani that TKO approached a member of Anthony Joshua’s team directly with a written proposal: roughly $10 million for permission to promote Fury-Joshua, move it to Madison Square Garden, and put AJ on WWE shows. Joshua rejected it and insisted his contract be honored — the December 11 fight stays in Cardiff, with no TKO involvement. Separately, a single unverified Substack report claims an earlier TKO approach was $400 million over three fights. No major outlet has corroborated that figure, and boxing has heard this song before: in 2018, a reported $500 million Zuffa offer to AJ was denied outright by Dana White himself.

Why it matters. The verified part is the story: Zuffa Boxing isn’t trying to build heavyweight boxing organically, it’s trying to buy position in the sport’s biggest fight — behind the incumbent promoter’s back — and the sport’s biggest name keeps stonewalling it. That’s TKO telling you exactly how it sees boxing: a talent-acquisition market, not a build.

📊 The Full Card

Strickland threatens to walk — pay ultimatum with the belt on his shoulder (Oct 12) · MMA

• Middleweight champion Sean Strickland said on X he feels “over it” over the UFC’s pay disparity versus fighters like McGregor — suggesting he may vacate the title and move up to light heavyweight, even floating a Jake Paul fight. He was slated to defend against Nassourdine Imavov next. Jorge Masvidal publicly backed him. (MMA Fighting; Yahoo Sports, via SportsNewsReport.)
• The business read: A sitting champion threatening to walk while holding the belt is the strongest public pressure point on the UFC pay model since the Paramount era began — and the outside option he’s naming isn’t another MMA league, it’s boxing. When the leverage play is leaving, the talent market isn’t working.

MVP Page: Misfits pays “two times more” than the UFC (Oct 12) · BUSINESS

• Michael “Venom” Page told Ariel Helwani he’ll earn more across his three-fight Misfits deal than his entire UFC contract paid him — seven figures per fight, on an 18-month deal that still lets him grapple outside. He’ll be the face of Misfits’ MMA expansion; KSI announced the signing in-ring at Misfits 30 on Saturday. (MMA Junkie.)
• The business read: A 5-1 UFC fighter just made Misfits’ fighter-economics pitch concrete: double UFC money on a short leash. If Misfits keeps signing disgruntled UFC veterans at 2x, they become the only real free-agency alternative to the UFC — and that’s worth more to them than any single event.

BKB 62: Ortiz vs. Malignaggi headlines December 5 in LA (Oct 12) · BARE-KNUCKLE

• Two former boxing world champions — Victor Ortiz (33-7-3) and Paulie Malignaggi (36-8) — headline BKB 62 at the Orpheum Theatre in Los Angeles on December 5. It’s Malignaggi’s first fight since Rolando Dy stopped him; tickets went on sale Monday. CEO David Tetreault framed it as the fight “that should have happened years ago in traditional boxing.” (Sherdog; BKB official.)
• The business read: BKB keeps stacking legacy boxing names to rent their credibility — and December 5 in LA puts them head-to-head with Misfits Mania the same night. Two mid-tier promotions are now openly fighting over the same influencer-era audience.

DAZN reboots its studio show: Kellerman out, Mario Lopez in (Oct 12) · MEDIA

• Max Kellerman and LeSean McCoy won’t return for season two of DAZN’s Inside the Ring; Mario Lopez joins as the new host, with Mike Coppinger already announced as returning. The show airs twice weekly on DAZN and The Ring’s YouTube. Kellerman stays on Zuffa Boxing events regardless. (Front Office Sports, via mirror.)
• The business read: DAZN is trading insider credibility for mainstream celebrity wattage on its flagship studio show — a bet that reach beats expertise in 2026’s sports-media market. And it lands one week after the DAZN–The Ring control chatter: same umbrella, same thesis.

The IBA is running a $20M pro-boxing prize circuit — and Chisora wants its belt (Oct 12) · BOXING

• At a Çırağan Palace press conference in Istanbul (Oct 6, reported Oct 12), IBA president Umar Kremlev announced the next IBA World Championships will carry a $20 million prize fund with $1 million per gold medalist — up from $8 million in Dubai. Derek Chisora attended and plans to fight WBA “regular” champion Murat Gassiev in December (London or Manchester) with both the IBA and WBA belts on the line, with Kremlev backing the idea. (FightNews.) The $20M/$1M figures are Kremlev’s claims, not audited.
• The business read: The IBA — exiled from the Olympic movement, run by a Kremlin-linked president — is building a parallel pro-boxing economy with real money. A name like Chisora legitimizing an “IBA belt” in a heavyweight main event is exactly how sanctioning-body inflation becomes a business problem for the WBC, WBA, IBF and WBO.

💬 The Chatter

What the fight world is talking about — no take required, just the room.

• Pereira says the UFC manufactured the heavyweight poll. Alex Pereira told Brazilian press he never saw the “fan survey” the UFC cited to justify Gane-Hokit over his rematch — and pointed at Daniel Cormier’s pre-announcement talking points as the tell. (MiddleEasy, Oct 12)
• Paulo Costa: “somewhere” by year’s end. With one fight left on his UFC contract and no word from the promotion, Costa posted he’ll compete “at an event at the end of the year,” openly disputing five-round main-event pay terms. (Sherdog, Oct 12)
• Tim Kennedy shot in the DRC. The former UFC fighter was reportedly shot three times while working private security under contract for Vectus Global in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. (Reuters via MMA Fighting, Oct 12)
• MVP signs women’s phenom Shera Mae Patricio. The 10-0, WBA #2 bantamweight — a three-time US amateur national champion — joins a roster MVP says holds 17 world champions, including undisputed 118-lb champ Dina Thorslund. (SI, Oct 12)
• Jake Paul flew Marine One with Trump. Paul joined the president (and Jon Gruden) for a midterm rally in Youngstown, Ohio, took the podium, and told protesters “Twitter fingers never built the country.” Trump has predicted Paul will run for office “in the not too distant future.” (NY Post, SportBible, Oct 12)

📋 Fight Sheet

💰 Who Got Paid

The number of the week: a reported $34M gate for Fury-Joshua (Oct 10) · BOXING

Dana White told Sky Sports that 500,000+ queued on Ticketmaster for Cardiff, fewer than 700 tickets remained, and the gate is scaled at roughly $34 million — which would make it the biggest British boxing gate ever. (Bloody Elbow.) Key words: White says. Nobody outside the building has seen the receipts, and the number conveniently keeps White at the center of a fight whose paperwork reportedly excludes him. But if even half of it holds, the takeaway stands: this fight is a machine, not a dispute — and the leverage in every future promoter fight shifts to whoever can move demand like that.

📈 Markets

“Adapt what is useful, reject what is useless, and add what is specifically your own.”

— Bruce Lee

That’s the fight business today. See you tomorrow morning.