The biggest What If in UFC history

The biggest unanswered question raised by Netflix's Mr. McMahon docu-series.

There are only a few big What If? questions that are unresolved in MMA history.

Shane McMahon in “Mr. McMahon” (Image credit: Netflix)

What if PRIDE had survived their yakuza scandal?

What if Fedor Emelianenko had fought in the UFC?

What if someone other than Endeavor had purchased the UFC?

But the biggest What If? that all of these other What Ifs revolve around is this granddaddy of second-guessing:

What if Vince McMahon had helped his son Shane facilitate a purchase of UFC?

A WWE McMahon family ownership of UFC. Now that would have changed the course of combat sports history.

How would the McMahon family have navigated PRIDE’s yakuza troubles? How would the McMahons negotiated differently with Fedor? What kind of media rights deals and sponsorship would the UFC have been able to obtain?

How different would the product look today?

Of all the time-wasting historical MMA questions you could ask, the concept of Shane McMahon owning the UFC is by far the most fascinating question.

Why? Because there is no one perfect answer. I can’t definitively say it would have been a raging success nor could you guarantee that it would have flopped like his father’s World Bodybuilding Federation or the XFL. I can only offer an informed opinion.

If you are unhappy or dissatisfied with the current direction of the UFC product, daydreaming about what a McMahon ownership of UFC could have accomplished is both a terrifying and sentimental exercise in fandom.

The most under-looked aspect of this What If scenario is that the McMahon Family had not one but two legitimate chances at purchasing the UFC. They had two possible bites at the apple and Vince didn’t chase.

Let’s pull back the curtain and look at some of the major differences that a McMahon-owned UFC would have looked like and how it would have changed your life.