The MMA journalist somehow overlooks Combate Global’s recent history of repeated one-night tournament success while covering the failed tournament formats of other fight promotions.
A little over one year ago, Yahoo! Sports launched a dedicated combat sports news web platform, Uncrowned.
Led by veteran MMA journalist, Ariel Helwani, the platform quickly scooped up a handful of other MMA journalists to contribute editorial content. One of these reporters was Ben Fowlkes.
Known for his opinionated reporting, Fowlkes took a shot, in his latest contribution to Uncrowned, at covering the history of MMA promotions that launched with tournament format events and that eventually diverted away from this type of fight card.
Fowlkes illustrated how the UFC, Bellator and Professional Fighters League (PFL) all launched with live events that were centered around a tournament – either a one-night tournament or a season-long tournament – and how each outfit eventually pivoted away from this format.
The story was likely inspired by PFL’s recent announcement that the organization would be abandoning season-long tournaments for events that would feature single fights only, beginning in 2026.
To further illustrate his point, Fowlkes dug relatively deep into hardcore MMA history, pointing to longtime defunct and fly-by-night company, Shine, as another MMA entity that never gained any traction with the tournament format.
Launched in 2009, Shine produced a whopping total of three live events and did not make it out of 2010 alive.
Fowlkes certainly recalled Shine’s brief existence but, oddly enough, one promotion that he didn’t bring up once in the story and that would surely be an exception to the narrative Fowlkes crafts in the article, is Combate Global.
Above: Ramiro “El Cachanilla” Jimenez won Combate Global’s ‘Copa Combate’ one-night tournament in 2023.
The U.S.-based, Hispanic themed Combate Global has been operating live shows since 2015 and is responsible for bringing back the one-night, eight-fighter tournament that the UFC utilized for its first several events.
In 2017, Combate Global debuted the ‘Copa Combate’ in Cancun, and awarded previously unknown Levy Marroquin the tournament’s $100,000 grand prize after the Mexican fighter defeated three straight opponents that night.
In fact, there have been a total of five Copa Combate one-night tournaments that have taken place in three different countries – Mexico, the U.S. and Peru – and that have awarded what is to some fighters, life-changing money.
Regardless of where they took place and what kind of prize money was at stake in them, all of these Combate Global tournaments have aired live on television in the U.S., in Spanish as well as in English, on networks ranging from NBCSN to Paramount+, the new home of the UFC, to Fuse.
Many of these tournaments have also been covered by major American sports and lifestyle news media platforms too, including Yahoo! Sport’s Spanish language sister platform, Yahoo en Español, so it’s not like the event or the promotion is some kind of obscure product that has been difficult to discover or watch live.
Outside of just the Copa, Combate Global has promoted other eight-fighter tournaments as well as four-fighter tournaments in a single night, including the memorable women’s strawweight (115 pounds/52 kilograms) showdown that Yazmin Jauregui was the winner of in 2021.
So, are we really to believe that Fowlkes remembered a flash in the pan fight promotion from 15 years ago, but couldn’t recall a promotion that has been producing tournaments on an ongoing basis for the last 8 years?
No way. We don’t buy it.
One of two things likely transpired here. Either, its a “cultural bias” that Combate Global boss and UFC co-founder Campbell McLaren has more than once insisted exists within the circle of MMA journalism (i.e. the promotion is Spanish, so it doesn’t matter), or it could be a personal beef that the Yahoo! Sports journalist has with “El Jefe” himself.
McLaren, who is blunt and often brutally honest on social media, was quick to call out Fowlkes on X for the latter’s sloppy episode of journalism, pointing out Combate’s regular cadence of live tournament competition.
Above: Combate Global CEO Campbell McLaren quickly addressed Fowlkes’ botched Yahoo! Sports article.
This wasn’t the first time McLaren has called out Fowlkes. He has done so on several occasions as he has with others who cover the sport, and maybe that rubs Fowlkes the wrong way, although that would be ironic considering how opinionated Fowlkes is in his own right.
As of today, Fowlkes has not addressed McLaren’s message – at least not publicly.
Perhaps, this run-in will serve as a wake-up call to Fowlkes, though, because his ignorance this go-around is inexcusable.
