Is ONE Championship going out of business? Former Bellator executive Mike Kogan thinks so

Last week, the news broke that Bellator had been acquired by the Professional Fighters League (PFL), including its roster, and the executives were also offered roles.  The deal included a role for Bellator executive Mike Kogan.

In an interview with The MMA Hour, Kogan said that if he doesn’t go to the PFL than he’d likely retire.  He also said that ONE Championship is about to go out of business.  

“I’ve been at this sport for a long time. I don’t have it in me to start from scratch. There just isn’t anybody else. If you don’t go to PFL, obviously, I’m not getting hired by the UFC, ONE Championship pissed away $600 million and is about to go out of business, where do you go,” Kogan said.

“They’re (ONE Championship) gonna go out of business. These people scammed everybody they could scam. They’ve run out of people to scam,” said Kogan.  “It’s the truth. I mean come on. 10 years. You can’t be a start-up for 10 years. Jesus Christ. At some point, you’ve got to start showing something. So, they’re gonna go out, so where’s there to go? There’s nowhere else to go. I’ve always said, this is like the largest small industry in the world. It’s big, it’s on TV, there’s millionaires being made, there’s all these stories, but at the end, it’s a handful of people that run it and a handful of people that have an ability to do anything with it.”

In May 2022, Sityodtong, ONE Championship founder, stated ONE Championship had 600 fighters in the organization.  That’s 600 fighters that will soon be free agents, if Kogan is correct.  The company’s 2021 publicly available financial statements indicated that the company had generated an accumulated net loss of $383 million.  The financial statements for 2022 were not readily available.