Netflix is going to test the limits of MMA’s fandom outside of the UFC this weekend through a recipe of nostalgia and a counternarrative to the UFC.
The idea of Ronda Rousey, much less Gina Carano, competing in MMA in 2026 was preposterous not too long ago. Rousey dismally left the sport, suffering two brutal losses and serving divorce papers to the sport, media, and its fans. The last time Carano fought, Barack Obama had not even been in office for nine months.
Netflix is banking on the name recognition of two of the sport’s biggest names during their eras, but returning in a much different universe. The fanbase of the UFC has dramatically flipped from the halcyon days of the post-Ultimate Fighter boom, when Rousey was its largest crossover star, obtaining media that no other fighter could land, including Conor McGregor.
Where is that fanbase today? Netflix is hopeful it will be in front of its television with a subscription on Saturday night.
MMA has a strained relationship with its history, where celebrating the stars of yesterday is confined to those in good standing with the UFC or the diehard fanbase that takes joy in looking back. The likes of Randy Couture, Chuck Liddell, Tito Ortiz, Ken Shamrock, Matt Hughes, and Royce Gracie are hardly marketed by the UFC as its founding fathers, with the post-pandemic fans likely having no attachment to these names, much less an interest in viewing their contributions.
Carano is more known for her acting career and the decision by Disney to fire her over remarks during COVID comparing those on the right being persecuted to being Jewish during the Holocaust. This press tour has done plenty to rehabilitate the negative connotation her brand absorbed, at least among the fight audience. Her ability to propel women’s MMA onto network television in 2007 cannot be understated and was every bit the needle mover her story assigns. However, it has been seventeen years since she fought, and this is not a sport that is kind to that degree of inactivity.
For Rousey, she had a contentious breakup with the sport, believing the fans and media “turned” on her. She saddled a lot of the promotional duties she felt she owed the sport and the advancement of women in the sport. The wagon became too heavy, and when placing the company first, she took on Holly Holm two months earlier than scheduled, and it was her undoing. A year later, she famously shunned the media in the week leading up to her fight with Amanda Nunes and was violently stopped at UFC 207. Rousey wasn’t shy about her disdain for the fanbase and media, migrating to professional wrestling one year later and having a similar bad taste after ending her second tenure in WWE in the summer of 2023.
It is a remarkably different Rousey in this promotion, embracing media obligations and operating with an obvious chip on her shoulder after her perceived “dismissal” by the UFC’s chief business officer, Hunter Campbell. Rousey may not be showing any animus toward Carano, but there is no shortage of vitriol aimed at Campbell and a conviction for reform in the sport. That said, if her initial pitch had been accepted, this fight would be happening in a UFC setting under the same oppressive settings she now laments.
The card is approaching 15,000 tickets distributed to the Intuit Dome in Inglewood, a very healthy number where the cheapest ticket is listed at $88 on Ticketmaster. This card is not going to be celebrated or derided based on ticket sales because the metric carrying the weight is the viewership figure on Netflix. Rousey is aiming for the U.S. record set by Cain Velasquez and Junior dos Santos (also fighting on the card) in November 2011, when approximately 9,556,000 watched their fight on Fox and Fox Deportes.
Going from the hatred and vitriol spewed between Sean Strickland and Khamzat Chimaev to this promotion feels like an alternate reality for the sport. There was a time when UFC promoted Rousey’s ability to bring young girls to the arenas while extending her appearances to outlets like The View and Good Morning America. Today, the UFC is attracting an audience that could not be further removed from that mission statement of a decade ago. So, will this new audience be sampling Saturday’s card?
It’s an unexplored question in the lead-up to this fight of how much of the fanbase from 2015, much less 2009, has outgrown the current brand of the UFC, and will they come back for one night? Most Valuable Promotions has been wise to cast the widest net with the additions of Francis Ngannou, Nate Diaz, and Mike Perry. For the weekly fight consumer, it’s hard to argue with lightweights Salahdine Parnasse and Kenneth Cross having a spot on the main card.
Rousey has inferred this will be her last fight, and it would be hard to fathom Carano coming back for more. That forces the question of what success means for this event, and is Netflix entering the MMA business or the Ronda Rousey business? Any viewership milestone will rightly be attributed to the appeal of the female main event, but it’s imperative that viewers leave with something to come back for and that MVP and Netflix use this “open house” to direct those eyes toward a follow-up.
The nostalgic crowd will remember the UFC’s playbook regarding head-to-head competition. When Affliction (featuring the UFC’s favorite politician) ran its inaugural show in July 2008, it took one phone call by Dana White to land his own free special on Spike TV to combat the upstart and declare war from the jump. That UFC is gone, and in its place is one serving its audience on a platter to Netflix, offering one of its weakest cards in recent memory from the Apex, and forcing fans and media to make the unfavorable comparison. Netflix will own the night for MMA, but to borrow from Paul Levesque, this is definitely a marathon and not a sprint.
Nostalgia draws, but it’s not a long-term business plan. The intentions of Netflix and MVP are still unknown and likely won’t be until the results of this show are revealed. To compete with the UFC is to understand that their market domination is so deep and leaves any competitors with a small slice of available fighters that can command attention and a diminutive size of the MMA market share to compete for.
For one night, promoting something as being “not UFC” can work, but if this is to become a truly viable entity, then it’s step one of a massive uphill climb that will have to answer the question of what this promotion is, rather than what it is not.
