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Longtime Saints WR Marques Colston, MMA Fighter Nick Edwards Team Up to Tackle Sports Ownership

Originally posted on Athlon Sports | By Jake Elman | Last updated Sep 26, 2025 1:34 PM ET

With successful athletic careers behind them, New Orleans Saints legend Marques Colston and former MMA fighter Nick Edwards are ready to handle their next challenge: Entrepreneurship.

Colston and Edwards have teamed up to create the Champion Fund, a new venture that allows fans to invest in a portfolio of sports assets the two are building.

Colston, the Saints’ all-time leader in receiving yards and touchdowns, said that he and Edwards first connected several years ago. Their shared backgrounds as athletes transitioning to running sports technology companies formed a bond that eventually resulted in them teaming up and creating the Champion Venture Partners firm.

“One of the things that we kept coming [back] to is the value of sports is this collection of stakeholders,” Edwards explained in an interview with Athlon Sports. “The owners put up the capital and build the infrastructure. The athletes drive the performance to create the product, and then ultimately, the fans are who make this a business with their support.

“But the more that we kept looking around the ecosystem,” Edwards continued, “the three different groups of stakeholders [are making] all the value, but only one group of the stakeholders had an opportunity to own within the asset class.”

The Connected Path From Professional Athlete to Entrepreneur

As Colston pointed out, though, their experience running routes or fighting only goes so far in such a career change.

“One of the things that Nick and I have always connected around is [that] the journey to becoming a professional athlete directly mirrors the journey of becoming an entrepreneur,” Colston said. “You have this idea, this concept in your head, that you’re the only person that believes in it at the time, and you’re constantly going through step by step, getting validation from every single group that you need to ultimately get to a place [and] get to the end destination.”

Dreaming big and overcoming roadblocks is nothing new for Colston, a 2006 seventh-round pick out of Hofstra. Despite being selected 252nd of 255 players, Colston recorded six 1,000-yard seasons in his first seven years and played a pivotal role on the Saints’ 2009 Super Bowl team.

“Those are the things that we apply on a daily basis,” Colston said. “Those are the mindsets and the methodologies that are tried and true for us as athletes. They don’t look like they translate, but ... it’s the same experience, same mindset, same process, same discipline, just wrapped in a different context.”

Edwards added: “Being an entrepreneur is getting punched in the mouth every single day, and there’s not a lot of people who want to make that leap, but the beauty of doing this ... is now we can actually give that access for our fight to everybody else.”

Edwards and Colston hope to officially launch the Champion Fund before the end of 2025.

This article first appeared on Athlon Sports and was syndicated with permission.

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