Amazon Prime Video a growing force in combat sports world

In case you missed it, undefeated kickboxer Tenshin Nasukawa is making his boxing debut against Yuki Yonaha on April 8th. The event will be streamed live on Amazon Prime which marks another event from the combat sports world heading to the tech giant’s streaming service. Amazon Prime is looking to be a powerhouse in the live streaming of sports and is investing heavily into the world of martial arts.

Amazon Prime: ONE Championship, Bare Knuckle Boxing, and Boxing

Amazon Prime has invested into some interesting sports to bolster its live viewing options. There’s the big fish that has been caught: NBA League Pass and MLB.tv. But combat sports fans have had a healthy dose of Amazon Prime making their self-known to the bloodthirsty masses.

Tenshin Nasukawa making his debut on Prime Video is big enough. He has a major Japanese following which Amazon likely wants to market to.

The biggest promotion added to Amazon Prime is ONE Championship. The promotion is arguably the third or fourth biggest promotion in the world and absolutely the biggest in Asia. ONE made their Prime debut in August of 2022 and has put on some great fights there that have seen fans treated to a litany of violence like Demetrious Johnson and Adriano Moraes 2.

Even more recently, Amazon Prime has picked up Bare Knuckle Boxing (BKB) as a part of their programming. Quite violent of a sport coming from a bunch of nerds at a tech company, right? That’s not even the tip of the iceberg.

In 2021, Amazon Prime announced a partnership with World Lethwei Championship to broadcast their events on the platform. That was supposed to happen in December of last year before the coup of Myanmar shut the promotion down due to turbulence in that part of the world.

It is clear that Amazon Prime has an affinity for violence. With Nasukawa debuting and the already added ONE Championship and BKB, it’s going to be interesting to see if other promotions shuck the chains of UFC Fight Pass or ESPN+ to migrate to the company with more money than they can burn. Tides could be turning in the combat sports world and Amazon Prime Video could be the center of it all.

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Blaine Henry
Your friendly neighborhood fight fan. I watch way too many fights and my wife lets me know it.