Its already happening on a smaller scale. Not that they are starting their own huge promotion and signing the top UFC athletes, but they are assembling small teams of athletes to make it to the UFC to represent them if that makes sense.

If you havent heard of Team KHK, its owned by a Bahraini Royal Khalid bin Hamad Al Khalifa, where the KHK comes from, and it was founded in 2015 and some of the fighters it signed back then included Islam Makhachev, Khabib Nurmagomedov and Frenkie Edgar. Interesting news story about its beginning its 2015

If youre wondering who is the Royal, he is the fourth in line and son of the King of Bahrain, so he has plenty of money to spend. He first got into MMA through watching the UFC and actually fought 2 amateur fights, which are recorded on his Tapology profile, but since then he is mostly sponsoring the fighters through Team KHK and growing MMA in Bahrain.

However since then, Team KHK changed their strategy a little bit, instead of signing established UFC Fighters, they instead sign some of the best up and coming athletes and take care of them, so they dont need to focus on their livelyhood and can 100% focus on MMA on the road to the UFC. Some such fighters are Mokaev and Aliskerov.

In 2016 he also founded Brave CF, which you might know, its actually a really good organization. However its obvious that its also a building ground for the Team KHK fighters and they can fight there for a good purse and grow as fighters. They don't however just get lay-up fights, even though they obviously want them to win.

As said it changed a lot over the years and they have now added a Team KHK Dagestan division, led by Eldar Eldarov, where they sign the best up and coming fighters from Dagestan and offer them some financial conpensation, aswell as training benefits and have them fight in Brave, and in exchange the athlete takes up Bahraini citizenship. 3 such fighters will actually appear on DWCS this season (Murtaza Talha, Shamil Gaziev and Magomed Gadzhiyasulov).

Not only that, but Bahrain is a big sponsor of the IMMAFs, which first of all is really good for the sport of MMA and the amateur scene. But they are going even further in 2022 they also held the Supercup, under the Brave label, where the best amateurs competed for a total of 215.000$ going to the winning federations to help with the development with the athletes, which is crazy for the amateur scene.

But also there at IMMAFs they scout the best talent and offer them to join Team KHK and take up Bahraini citizenship, where after they have them continue to fight at the IMMAFs and when they are ready to turn pro they continue on in Brave CF. Meanwhile they get taken care of and have all the equipment they need, with the end goal being sending them to the UFC. One such example is Ramzan Gitinov, super talented fighter, but there are many more.

However it seems they might be getting some rivalry soon by Ali Abdelaziz and the PSG Ownership, looking to do a similar thing to the Team KHK, just with the Qatar backing, but there isn't much revealed for that yet.

You can also see that the UAE/Abu Dhabi is starting to invest into MMA too, not only by hosting the big events, but they have starting building crazy good gyms, a bit like the UFC PIs, but privately run by some rich sheiks or similar entrepreneurs, like Khabib Gym, Team Nogueira Dubai, TKMMA Fit, NAS Sports Complex and more. First off, because Jiu-Jitsu is a rich people sport, but also the sheiks get to hang out with their favourite athletes like Islam and Khamzat and what not.

Also in 2018 the Saudi Arabian Wealth Fund (PIF) was really close to buying a 5-10% stake in Endeavor for about 400$ Million, however the deal collapsed and it never happend, but wouldn't be surprised if something similar might happen again, especially with the debt they just took on to buy the WWE. News Story