Ari Emanuel Praises Triple H & Dana White’s Work With WWE & UFC, Talks Netflix/WWE Deal

Ari Emanuel is very happy with how Triple H and Dana White are doing with WWE and the UFC, respectively. Emanuel is the CEO of TKO, the parent company of both WWE and UFC, and he recently spoke on Bloomberg about the success of both companies, WWE’s deal with Netflix and more. You can see highlights below (courtesy of Wrestling Inc):

On the performance of the two companies: “I don’t think it’s Fight Club. I remember watching WWE — WWF, actually — when I was young. Paul [Levesque] has done an amazing job with the WWE, with ‘Raw,’ ‘SmackDown,’ PLEs, ‘NXT.’ And UFC is a sport that Dana [White] created over 30 years ago. Didn’t exist. [It was] His vision. You don’t have to explain the rules of the UFC to anybody in the world.”

On Triple H taking over WWE from Vince McMahon: “When you have guys that are visionaries, take whatever comes through on the cases with Vince McMahon who is no longer with the company, and now Paul, Triple H, is running that. They understand, kind of, the heartbeat. The skills I’ve maybe learned in the talent agency side have helped, but now we’re partners. So, now, that’s how I look at it. You just have to let the talent — and those guys are talent — do what they do and support them with all that they need.”

On WWE’s deal with Netflix: “You can see that Netflix wants to be in the live sports business. I think they [WWE] will perform very well for them. There’s a huge chunk of the audience that are WWE fans that are not right now, based on our research, Netflix subscribers. If they capture a portion of those, it’s a huge win for them and a huge win for us.”

On the potential of UFC moving to Netflix: “Listen, ESPN has been an incredible partner. First quarter we’ll see, that’s where we can start. We would love to be back in ESPN. They have been incredible to us.”