Netflix and Jake Paul’s Most Valuable Promotions (MVP) entered the MMA space with a bang this past weekend. The Ronda Rousey vs. Gina Carano card broke the sport’s all-time U.S. viewership record, opening the door for more potential events in the future after a strong debut.
MVP co-founder Nakisa Bidarian assured the MMA community Tuesday on “The Ariel Helwani Show” that the promotion is here to stay in the space. While no discussions have been held yet with Netflix about the future, Bidarian says the hope is to snowball these initial efforts into something even greater.
“One hundred percent, MVP is in the MMA business,” Bidarian told Uncrowned. “There is a clear opportunity to create an alternative avenue for fighters that truly represents the best of the sport and is fighters first. Our hope is that’s with our partners at Netflix. We’ve been very fortunate with the outreach we’ve gotten around what we did and what we accomplished and what we delivered.”
Neither MVP nor Netflix are strangers to big events. The latter has been a part of the live-event fight business since 2024, showcasing some of combat sport’s biggest nights, including Paul’s boxing matches against names like Mike Tyson and Anthony Joshua.
With his experience now in both sports, Bidarian likes the opportunity that awaits after Saturday’s success.
“Boxing is more difficult to own than MMA,” Bidarian said. “I say own — UFC is obviously the reference brand. They’re going to be that for many years to come. But there’s no true No. 2 player. Boxing, there’s six or seven of us putting on premium big events every single week. So, do I think we can come and take a real share within the MMA sphere? Yes. Do I believe we can convince Netflix to do it on a more regular basis than they’ve shown to do so with boxing? If we have the product and we show them the path of how this can work and set expectations appropriately, and ask for the right amount of rights fees that are appropriate for that, my hope is that the answer is yes.
“But I will say that there’s Amazon, Fox, ESPN. There’s definitely other outlets that, once we present them this whole package, will have interest in what we’re doing.”
Bidarian already has an idea of what the future landscape could look like. MVP events don’t have to be Netflix-exclusive or even on the platform at all. That would be ideal, of course, but Bidarian wants to stay in front of the masses at a comfortable frequency.
“It depends on the partner, but if I look at Netflix, I would love to be in a situation to have 12 events a year. One per month, effectively, would be the ideal scenario,” Bidarian said.
“Is there enough big-name stars, draws to put on 42 UFC events? Every event isn’t going to be Rousey-Carano, but it’s about a consistent base that delivers a certain viewership number, right? The WWE delivers 2.5 million views on Netflix every single week, pretty consistently. What can we do that delivers a consistent level of ratings that is appropriate for the investment that your distribution partner is making? That’s kind of the math that we have to figure out collectively with our distribution partner.”
As mentioned, the next steps for MVP’s future will be to establish reliable talent options.
The main event is an easy place to start. Rousey, who defeated Carano via a vintage 17-second armbar, was vocal before the fight that she was only doing her comeback bout as a one-off and then sailing back into the sunset to expand her family. Carano, however, has seemed much more open to whatever comes her way.
From Bidarian’s seat, he’d like to see each woman continue, and has brought that up to Rousey, despite her persistence in calling it a career.
“Gina Carano deserves a lot more than what happened last Saturday night,” Bidarian said. “Going into this, I said this to the people closest to me — my biggest fear for Gina was she’d work so hard to get where she had gotten to, but hadn’t had the opportunity to work hard at where she’d gotten to. So it was a process to retransform back to the fighter that she was. But by the time she got there, it was a few weeks away from fight night. Now, she’s a fighter again. Give her a full camp as a fighter. Not as someone becoming a fighter again. I think you’ll see who she really is, and I hope she considers doing at least one more with us.
“In terms of Ronda, I think she’s been very vocal, very clear, very transparent — this was one-and-done for her. We haven’t heard anything different, nor am I aggressively trying to convince her differently, because you never want money, for example, to be the reason someone does something. And I don’t think that’s how she’s motivated at all.”
Nate Diaz and Mike Perry also made their returns to MMA on Netflix after four-plus years away. Perry won the bout, bloodying and battering Diaz en route to a second-round doctor’s stoppage.
Rematch talks immediately brewed in the fight’s wake despite its lopsided nature.
“From our perspective, that’s a great headline event,” Bidarian said. “We haven’t advanced the ball more than that. Nate needs a little bit of time to recover, then we’ll get together and figure out what’s the right strategy, but I think they both deserve that rematch. I don’t think Mike wanted the fight to end that way.”
Of course, critics have been out in full force since the event concluded. A big gripe has been that the matchups on MVP’s MMA debut were too lopsided, as the results showed.
One of the more notable voices to react to the event was TKO president and COO Mark Shapiro, who called the Rousey fight “more of a stunt than a meaningful MMA event.” Bidarian found the comments confusing and somewhat hypocritical, considering the nature of how the bout wound up in MVP’s lap.
“The entire UFC Ronda Rousey train was built on quick finishes,” Bidarian said. “She was the biggest pay-per-view star in the sport based on quick finishes. UFC offered her certain amount of money to do the fight, it just wasn’t enough. They didn’t want to hit the margin profile. But to come out and say bad for the sport? What’s bad the sport is not paying the fighters. What’s bad for the sport is not paying attention enough to give Conor McGregor his due moment after five years of not being in the cage, in the Octagon, and you announce him on an Instagram live. That’s bad for the sport. Not what we did. What we did was tremendous for the sport.
“He’s talking to an audience that is not sophisticated when it comes to the fight game. He’s selling a narrative for his investors because he’s worried about the stock price, which he has share ownership in. So that doesn’t surprise me. In some ways, it’s expected.”
Launching your MMA product with record numbers is about as good an outcome as MVP could have asked for. But the hard work starts now in replicating the feat again. Bidarian is aware of that, reiterating that he and MVP MMA aren’t here to be the new UFC.
But a viable alternative? Absolutely.
“We aren’t in competition with the UFC. That was our first event,” Bidarian said. “Judge us versus Zuffa 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. Judge us versus UFC 30 in Atlantic City, which was the first event that Dana White oversaw as the president of the UFC. We’re four and a half years in. That was our first MMA event. Tell me another organization who has entered a sport with a strong existing player and delivered what we did with Netflix and the fighters. No one.
“Of course, now the onus is on us to show that it’s repeatable and can become consistent, but we’re not fools. We’re not in competition with the 800-pound gorilla that’s the UFC. But do we believe there’s a path to become a relevant player within MMA? Of course.”