Mailbag: After Ronda Rousey vs. Gina Carano, where can MVP MMA go from here?

Readers are still reeling from last weekend’s Ronda Rousey vs. Gina Carano MVP event on Netflix. Questions abound regarding next steps and teachable moments after a much-watched MMA debut.

Plus, did the UFC’s Arnold Allen get the short end of the stick, putting on an excellent performance to a paltry audience? All that and more in this week’s mailbag. To ask a question of your own, hit up @BenFowlkesMMA on X or @Ben_Fowlkes on Threads.

@NoahSas23: Do you think MVP on Netflix will be like Affliction? MVP didn’t set up where this is going next, and I can’t see them having long term success without having anything meaningful than having a fun night of fights for a few cards

In some crucial ways I think MVP is better positioned than Affliction was — and the biggest factor is Netflix. Affliction tried to pivot from being the gaudiest, most overpriced T-shirt brand of the 2000s into being a live event promoter whose events were only available on pay-per-view. That’s a hard sell when we haven’t even seen whether or not you’re capable of staging a competent MMA event. Affliction also had a bunch of fighters who meant something to the hardcore fanbase (and cost a ton to get), but nothing resembling a mainstream star.

But where I disagree with you is that Affliction always had a much clearer road map than MVP does. From the minute Affliction signed Fedor Emelianenko and Josh Barnett, it had somewhere to go. And, impossibly, things actually seemed to be working out! Fedor won all his fights (though the Andrei Arlovski one got a little dicey) and Barnett won his. Things were building to their inevitable clash in the third event. And then, well, one of those dang ol’ drug tests snagged Barnett (again). That was it for Affliction. It just wasn’t built to withstand a setback like that.

MVP seems more nimble and has the vast, easy reach of Netflix working for it. That’s huge. But it doesn’t have any clear way to go from here. All of the fighters we saw on MVP’s first MMA show are ones we might never see there again. It’ll be essentially starting over with whoever it can sign to do a second show. That might not be an insurmountable obstacle, but it’s also not ideal.

@MMAJunkieGeorge: Is 17 Ms what you expected to hear, from Netflix? I thought it would be more. You?

Any time you get 17 million viewers for a live sports event, that’s a success. It’s about four times what your average MLB postseason game gets. The NBA set a new viewership record for Game 1 of the Western Conference finals this week, and that peaked at about 12 million viewers. The UFC’s most comparable event was the heavyweight title fight on Fox back in 2011, and that peaked at 11.6 million.

Beating all that with your first MMA event is very, very good. It also sets a benchmark MVP needs to clear with the next one, or else it’ll look like a Rousey-fueled flash in the pan.

@KneebarNewsMMA: Please assign two separate grades to the MVP main card lineup. First, a grade 4 matchmaking. Second, a grade 4 how the fights actually turned out. Finally, to what extent do you credit the matchmaking for the way the fights went down?

I’d give MVP a solid B on matchmaking. There were really no surprises with how the fights turned out. Every main card match-up seemed designed to produce a certain result, and in every single case that was the result we got.

Mike Perry and Nate Diaz were there to bleed. Francis Ngannou was there to deliver a one-punch KO. Salahdin Parnasse was there as a glimpse of promising future talent. Rousey and Carano were there to deliver name value in a lopsided mismatch. Check, check, check. All across the board.

But I can’t really criticize it too much. It worked on the audience it was intended for. It created the right buzz and gave people a mix of fights they could mostly understand and appreciate. Given the limited free agents available to choose from right now, that was about as good as MVP could do.

@Screenplaya: Is Alex the GOAT if he beats Gane? Is he the GOAT if he beats Jon? If he beats Jon, does he take everything from him? Is that why Jon won’t do it? The juice-versus-squeeze math might not be math-ing for Jon, there.

Look, no one can become the GOAT of anything right now with a win over Ciryl Gane. No offense to him or anything. He’s a quality heavyweight and all, but at this point he’s faced three top heavyweights and emerged with a record of 0-2, 1 NC. Beating him doesn’t make you a heavyweight champ. It just puts you somewhere up there among the top heavyweights.

What this White House fight does do for Alex Pereira is cement his status as the down-for-whatever wild man willing to take on whoever you’ve got across three different weight classes. That in itself is uncommonly impressive. Just think about the range it takes to go from fighting at 185 pounds to the heavyweight division with a 265-pound limit. A lot of fighters claim they’ll fight anybody. Pereira actually means it.

So if he wins this, yeah, he gets a belt that says heavyweight champion on it. But mostly what he gets is even more respect for being willing to trade leather with whoever.

@justlikelasagna: While this BKFC cruise situation seems ripe for discussion (wtf), I’d prefer to talk about poor Arnold Allen putting on a clinic while no one in the world watched. Give that man a “taking one for the team” bonus for gods sake.

That really is sad, isn’t it? Arnold Allen is no dummy. He saw the situation for what it was. For a lot of fight fans, it’s almost like this quality victory for him just didn’t exist because they were busy elsewhere. And that sucks. He deserves better.

What’s a little surprising to me is that the UFC didn’t really make much of an effort here. Going back to the Affliction example, remember what the UFC did to counter-program that first event? We got Anderson Silva going up a weight class on cable TV. Nothing remotely like that here.

Not only did the UFC not come up with some big attraction to lure away viewers, it didn’t even seem interested in pushing the event it already had on the books. It’s like TKO executives just said, well, we’re going to lose this weekend’s battle but it doesn’t matter to the bottom line, so who cares? And in the end it’s Allen who really gets the worst of that deal.

@pmsdeadandalive: as a california resident, i’ll buy the plate. but as a mere fan of fighting, WHY DO I HAVE TO PAY FOR FIGHTERS’ PENSIONS? is there any chance we ever see a fighters’ union? it’s insane to me that it doesn’t seem like anyone has ever given it a real shot, at least not publicly.

I had the same thought while working on the story about the fighter pension fund in California, honestly. I think it’s great that the California commission does this, and laudable that people like Andy Foster care enough to keep looking for new revenue streams that will help retired fighters. But it’s also sad that it’s up to the commissions (well, just this one commission, since none of the rest seem to give a damn) and the fans to fund this.

This should be a job for the promoters. TKO just finished telling shareholders that its earnings keep going up and up. If the NFL can set aside a tiny bit of its money for ongoing health care and pension funds to take care of the people who did all the hard work, so could the UFC.

Then again, as you pointed out, it’s not like the NFL did any of that from the kindness of its heart. It took antitrust action (sounds familiar … ) and collective bargaining to make it happen. At least right now, fighters don’t seem remotely close to getting there themselves.

@AntEvansMMA: Even by the standards of the genre, weren’t Mark Shapiro’s comments that UFC “passed” on Ronda v Gina and that such a quick fight was “bad for MMA” just astonishingly on the money for late-stage capitalism?

I would say it seemed astonishingly disingenuous. It’s not like the UFC heard the idea for a Rousey vs. Carano fight and turned it down on its merits, even if that’s how Mark Shapiro wants to make it sound now. If anything, it seems like this is the fight Dana White was referring to lo those many months ago when he teased something big that none of us were going to see coming. It was the price tag that TKO balked at. Rousey pretty much nailed it when she said that the UFC’s priority right now is putting on the most cost-effective fights — not the biggest or most popular ones.

In that way, sure, this is what you get with a big corporation that’s answerable to shareholders and measures success in the form of stock buybacks and executive bonuses. It’s not a whole lot of fun as a fan, though.