When Paramount announced that it was acquiring the rights to live UFC fights in 2026, it seemed like the end of an era for ESPN. UFC events have streamed on ESPN+ for years, and with the new ESPN direct-to-consumer (DTC) streaming service having launched just last week, it felt a highly inopportune time for a property as popular as UFC to be leaving ESPN. Perhaps the UFC isn’t completely leaving ESPN, after all; a new report indicates the channel is closing in on a deal to acquire UFC Fight Pass, the fighting promotion’s streaming service that offers live and on-demand content.

As first reported by The MMA Draw, ESPN is in “advanced” discussions to purchase UFC Fight Pass. If the deal is completed, UFC Fight Pass will be integrated into the new ESPN streaming service, which costs $30 per month on its own and can also be integrated into the Disney Bundle.

UFC Fight Pass has a large selection of on-demand content, including the full inventory of UFC’s historical archive. It also includes libraries from affiliated promotions such as PRIDE, WEC, Strikeforce, Pancrase, and Invicta FC. All of that content is potentially about to fall under ESPN’s control.

Live broadcast rights that appear on UFC Fight Pass remain unsettled, and could be split off, according to a report from Awful Announcing. Fight Pass carries prelims from numbered UFC event cards, international events, and more, but it’s not yet clear if these, too, will be sold to ESPN in the deal.

ESPN has plenty of combat sports on the way, outside of UFC Fight Pass. Early in August, ESPN acquired the rights to stream all WWE premium live events, and a few weeks later, it announced that those events would begin streaming on its DTC service in September, instead of in 2026 as originally planned.

Numbered UFC events will switch to Paramount+ starting in 2026, which will ditch the pay-per-view format utilized by ESPN. That news seemed like the end of the line for ESPN and the UFC, but it appears perhaps the two sides aren’t splitting up with such finality after all.