ONE Championship has minimize three senior figures from its management group: VP Wealthy Franklin, SVP of Competitors Matt Hume, and COO John Scheler, in keeping with insider reviews. The departures mark essentially the most important shake-up on the high of the promotion, following a string of economic points, occasion cancellations, and organizational modifications throughout the corporate.
Wealthy Franklin, Matt Hume, and John Scheler Lower at ONE Championship
Wealthy Franklin joined ONE Championship as Vice President in Could 2014, transferring into the manager suite after a embellished MMA profession that included a UFC middleweight title reign and wins over Chuck Liddell, Wanderlei Silva, and Yushin Okami. Earlier than coming aboard, he consulted Dana White and Lorenzo Fertitta on the UFC, who each voiced their assist for the transfer.
Over the next decade, Franklin served as the general public face of ONE’s U.S. growth efforts, working with sports activities commissions to get ONE’s distinctive ruleset, which permits knees to the top of a grounded opponent, authorised in a number of American states. He additionally ran ONE Warrior Collection, a expertise discovery program that launched fighters corresponding to Stamp Fairtex, Lito Adiwang and Mark Abelardo onto ONE’s foremost roster. As just lately as early 2025, Franklin was talking publicly about deliberate U.S. occasions for the 12 months and dealing to develop the promotion’s American footprint.
Matt Hume got here to ONE at its founding, serving first because the promotion’s Chief Official and head referee earlier than transferring into an govt function in 2012 as Vice President of Operations and Competitors. His tasks included matchmaking, expertise recruitment, and overseeing ONE’s guidelines and laws.
Hume additionally had a previous connection to Wealthy Franklin that predated ONE, Franklin had skilled beneath “The Wizard” throughout his preventing profession. Hume’s time on the firm was not with out controversy: in 2025, supervisor Ali Abdelaziz publicly accused him of harming fighters’ careers, whereas former champion Arjan Bhullar posted a pointed social media rebuke of his practices earlier than the posts have been deleted. Hume’s tenure at ONE stretched over 13 years, making him one of many promotion’s longest-serving executives.
John Scheler joined ONE in July 2020 as Senior Vice President of Occasions and Manufacturing Growth, then was promoted to Chief Working Officer in March 2022. Earlier than ONE, he held senior technique and operations positions on the XFL and WWE, and previous to his sports activities profession served as a Marine Corps captain.
ONE Championship has been navigating a sustained financial wrestle, reporting a file consolidated loss of $90 million in 2023 and cumulative deficits exceeding $530 million because the promotion’s founding in 2011. The promotion’s most up-to-date out there financials, for FY2024, in keeping with Kristie Neo, confirmed some progress on the floor however revealed that roughly 93% of broadcast income was non-cash, placing precise money income for the 12 months at an estimated $19.5 million, barely sufficient to cowl operational outflows. ONE held simply $16 million in money on the finish of 2024.
The corporate had already carried out layoffs earlier than this newest spherical. In October 2024, ONE minimize “a few dozen” workers throughout a number of departments, together with at its Singapore headquarters, as a part of a said technique to succeed in profitability. These cuts affected workers in broadcast, e-sports, finance, advertising and marketing, and public relations. ONE Esports, the corporate’s gaming unit, individually retrenched over half its workers in early 2025.
On the occasions aspect, the promotion scrapped its deliberate return to Denver’s Ball Area, an August 2026 date that had already been pushed again as soon as, and quietly eliminated it from the web site alongside the closure of the ladies’s strawweight MMA division and the discharge of champion Xiong Jingnan. ONE had solely held two U.S. occasions complete, each in Colorado, because the promotion’s American debut in 2023. Amazon Prime Video, the platform that had broadcast ONE’s Battle Night time collection to U.S. audiences, reportedly didn’t renew its broadcast deal previous 2025.
The newest departures present a sample at ONE that stretches again a number of years. In early 2024, reviews circulated that the corporate had quietly misplaced three senior C-suite figures inside a three-month window, with no indication it deliberate to refill these seats. The promotion additionally shifted its world manufacturing hub from Singapore to Bangkok in mid-2025 as a part of a push to centralize content material operations and cut back prices. Fighter relations have additionally been strained, with outstanding former champions publicly calling on the promotion to launch them from contracts and one fighter submitting authorized discover citing breach of contract.
Franklin, for his half, expressed real enthusiasm for the corporate’s U.S. ambitions proper via early 2025, calling the work he had achieved in getting American commissions to approve the promotion’s ruleset a supply of non-public satisfaction. Neither he, Hume, nor Scheler has commented publicly on their exits as of this writing.
