Thoughts On UFC Selling Minority Percentage To Sheik Tahnoon of Abu Dhabi

Fiveouncesofpain reported that the UFC has reportedly sold a minority percentage of the company to Sheik Tahnoon of Abu Dhabi on yesterday:

FiveOuncesofPain.com has recently received reports from multiple sources extremely close to the situation indicating that the UFC has recently sold a minority percentage of the company to Sheik Tahnoon Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the son of the former United Arab Emirates president Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan.

Sheik Tahnoon is well known throughout the grappling community as the founder of the no-gi submission Olympics, the Abu Dhabi Combat Club. Himself a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belt under Renzo Gracie, Shiek Tahnoon has been a long time supporter and practitioner of Jiu-Jitsu.

Of course nobody knows the full details of the deal, but I do have some thoughts on why the deal took place.  We recently heard that Dana White thinks the UFC/MMA could be the largest sport in the world by 2020.  Well, to do that they would need to continue their international expansion and to do that they need money and connections.  Sheik Tahnoon provides a ton of both, so a minority percentage of the UFC is probably well worth what the Sheik can provide for them.  We know the sheik is a huge fan of grappling as he is the founder of the prestigious ADCC tournaments, and one of his adopted sons made his MMA debut in November of 2009.  It'll be interesting to see if Tahnoon will have any involvement in the day to day operations of the company(probably not) or what his role will be in regards to helping the UFC expand internationally.