A national governing body that admits it cannot outspend anyone is trying to outmaneuver everyone, one sub-100,000-follower creator at a time.

USA Fencing has spent nine months building one of the most aggressive creator strategies in Olympic sport, and the numbers moved. Digiday reported that since the program launched in December 2025, the body’s average monthly impressions are up 36.9%, reaching 4.75 million a month, a figure CEO Phil Andrews attributed to the push.

That is the whole thesis for underfunded Olympic sports staring down the 2028 Los Angeles Games. Fencing does not have a paid-promo war chest. It has creators, and it started courting them more than two years before the flame is lit. The recruiting floor is what makes the model copyable: some of the creators the body is hiring have fewer than 100,000 followers.

One of them is Star Wars stunt coordinator Nick Gillard.

The Star Wars Overlap USA Fencing Is Chasing

Gillard choreographed the lightsaber duels across the prequel films, and USA Fencing is leaning into the overlap. The body will appear at New York Comic Con with a saber and lightsaber masterclass featuring Gillard and two actors who have played Jedi Knights, whom Andrews declined to name. The bet is that a Star Wars audience is a fencing audience that has not been asked yet.

The payoff event comes first. Next month the USA Fencing Creator Showdown runs at Pier 17 on New York’s waterfront, pairing Olympians against creators known for fitness, dancing, and comedy who together hold more than 300 million followers across Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok. USA Fencing has confirmed the dates as September 21 through 23 at the Seaport, with creators on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube pairing up with elite fencers.

The Impression Target Keeps Climbing

Andrews has already raised his own bar. “Our initial target was 60 million impressions, we’re now reasonably expecting to go over 100 million,” he said, a projection that would nearly double the original goal for a single event.

The logic behind the spend sits in the data USA Fencing is chasing. A recent report from the Acceleration Community of Companies found that 49% of Gen Z sports fans became interested in a new sport or athlete through fan-created content, a channel that costs a small non-profit far less than a broadcast buy.

The Athletes Doubling as the Content Engine

Fencing is also using its own athletes as the content engine. USA Fencing was the only summer-sport governing body to send athletes to the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milano Cortina, where one of its Olympians fenced gymnast and NBC correspondent Laurie Hernandez, who Andrews said now counts as a creator in most respects with over a million followers.

The married Olympians Lee Kiefer and Gerek Meinhardt are part of the same play. They hold more than 100,000 followers combined on Instagram and 1.2 million likes on their joint TikTok account, an audience that travels with them from competition to feed.

Andrews frames the whole effort in blunt terms against his peers. “I think we’ve probably done more than anybody,” he said of the body’s creator work relative to other national governing bodies.

The Comic Con masterclass follows in October. The saber meets the lightsaber, and the door USA Fencing has propped open runs straight to Los Angeles in 2028.

Paul Frazier

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Jake Paul walked into the fight business selling views. On Thursday he walked out of it a co-owner of one of the largest combat sports companies on the planet.

Paul’s Most Valuable Promotions merged with the Professional Fighters League on July 30, forming a combined boxing and MMA company of nearly 400 athletes under the MVP banner, the two sides said in a joint press release. The PFL brand will phase out and migrate to MVP MMA, with full integration set for the start of 2027.

The arc is the story. Paul, who built his audience on YouTube, co-founded MVP in 2021, turned that reach into a promotion, and has now engineered a full combat sports conglomerate rather than a sponsorship. It is the clearest proof in sports that creator leverage can reshape legacy infrastructure, not just rent space on it.

The Ownership Table and the Distribution It Controls

John Martin, the PFL chief executive, becomes CEO and a board member of the combined business. Paul and co-founder Nakisa Bidarian stay on as co-founders and board members, with Bidarian continuing to run MVP’s boxing operation and live events.

The scale arrives with distribution attached. The new company keeps relationships with Netflix, ESPN and Sky Sports, and inherits PFL’s network of 34 broadcast and streaming partners reaching fans in more than 170 countries, per the release. That footprint is the asset a standalone creator promotion cannot buy overnight.

The merger is backed by existing PFL shareholders 885 Capital and affiliated entities of Knighthead Capital Management, who commit new capital as founding investors. The two sides said the combined company launches with the strongest balance sheet in its history.

PFL brings the roster. Founded in 2018, the league acquired Bellator MMA in late 2023 and sits as the No. 2 global MMA company behind the UFC, with fighters including Dakota Ditcheva, Usman Nurmagomedov, AJ McKee, Johnny Eblen and Cris Cyborg, according to Yahoo Sports. The combined company plans aggressive compensation offers and wants athletes crossing between boxing and MMA.

Paul Becomes the Product and the Owner at Once

Then Paul confirmed the part with no clear precedent. He plans to fight inside the company he co-owns.

“We started MVP to disrupt a broken model. We wanted to give fighters fair pay and a bigger, modernized stage to become global superstars. Joining forces with PFL accelerates that vision by a decade. I look forward to putting my entire promotional muscle into our new company, returning to the boxing ring and making my MVP MMA debut,” Paul said in the release.

He set a timeline on ESPN’s SportsCenter. “I’ve been trying to make [my MMA debut] happen for a long time. It’s really just down to negotiations behind the scenes. I’m going to come back, hopefully, this year into boxing and then looking to do MMA in 2027,” Paul told ESPN.

That closes the loop. Paul is at once the draw, the promoter and the rights holder, a structure combat sports has not seen from a single figure.

Martin framed the deal in terms of what the pieces add up to. “This merger brings scale in operations, in distribution and media rights, in sponsorship, in fighter development and in fan engagement,” he said.

The business is already running. The combined company has five premium boxing and MMA events scheduled for August, and PFL alone will produce 24 events across 11 countries in 2026, roughly 150 hours of live content. That volume feeds the rights conversations Martin now controls.

One open piece hangs over the money. PFL’s domestic broadcast deal with ESPN expires at the end of 2026, and a new distribution agreement is expected before year-end.

The rebrand runs into early 2027. Paul’s MMA debut is scheduled to follow it, inside the company that will carry his name.

Paul Frazier

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One knockout separates Amanda Serrano from a record that has stood since Christy Martin set it. She will chase it on a phone screen.

Serrano (49-4-1, 32 KOs) will defend her unified WBO, WBA, and Ring Magazine featherweight titles against Argentina’s Lucrecia Manzur (14-4, 7 KOs) on Friday, August 21 at Pechanga Resort Casino in Temecula, California, in the first championship boxing event streamed on TikTok Live. Most Valuable Promotions, the boxing company co-founded by Jake Paul, and TikTok announced the fight on July 16.

Serrano tied Martin’s all-time women’s boxing knockout record of 32 when she stopped Cheyenne Hanson in the second round on May 30 in El Paso, ESPN reported. A stoppage of Manzur breaks it. A win of any kind is her 50th.

The distribution is the story for creators. MVP is routing a live world title fight through a social app instead of pay-per-view or a streaming subscription. That moves premium live sports rights inside the same platform where the fight’s own highlights will circulate.

The Format Changes Too

Serrano vs. Manzur is the first unified women’s world championship contested over 12 two-minute rounds, per the MVP announcement. Serrano has fought recent defenses over three-minute rounds, including the Hanson stoppage. The scheduled distance now matches the men’s championship count while keeping the two-minute frame.

Serrano is the most decorated fighter in women’s boxing. She holds a Guinness World Record for most world titles won by a woman across weight classes, with belts in seven divisions. She was the first Puerto Rican undisputed world champion, male or female, and the first woman to headline Madison Square Garden.

She was also MVP’s first signing and holds a lifetime contract with the promotion, set to become chairwoman of its women’s boxing initiatives after she retires.

What Each Side Buys

Manzur, 27, from San Miguel, Tucumán, is the WBO’s No. 2 featherweight contender and enters on a five-fight winning streak after taking the WBO Latino title in November 2024 and defending it twice. The Temecula card is her first world title shot and her first fight on U.S. soil.

“I’ve been asking for this opportunity for a very long time,” Manzur said in a statement. She called Serrano one of the sport’s true icons.

For Serrano, the platform is the point. “I’ve dedicated my career to creating opportunities for women’s boxing and bringing our sport to the biggest stages possible, so to headline the first-ever championship boxing event on TikTok is incredibly meaningful,” she said in the announcement, first reported by The Hollywood Reporter.

Paul and MVP co-founder Nakisa Bidarian framed the deal as a break from the traditional model. They said the partnership was another example of a vision to make world championship fights more accessible than ever.

Serrano told ESPN after the Hanson win that 2026 would likely be her last year as a professional and that she was targeting Martin’s record. She has given no indication that Manzur will be her final fight.

The record has held since Martin set it. The night that could end it streams August 21.

Paul Frazier

Contributor. Thinking through my fingers.

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