Ronda Rousey + Gina Carano + Netflix > UFC White House

The mainstream casual fan is on a different wavelength than the UFC on Paramount

The biggest MMA fight of the year will be a garbage senior-league WMMA bout no one needs.

This week, Netflix and Most Valuable Promotions announced that Ronda Rousey vs. Gina Carano will stream live from the Intuit Dome on May 16.

Most Valuable Promotions are Jake Paul and Nakisa Bidarian. You might remember them from such fistic classics as Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson.

Jake’s a little indisposed after having his jaw broken by Anthony Joshua in December, so we’re spared another of his pointless bouts.

Instead, we get a much more clever spectacle.

One that likely won’t match the 60 million viewers Netflix claims for Tyson/Paul, but what it is very likely to do is outperform Paramount’s UFC White House event by a wide margin.

WTF?!?

Rousey vs. Carano is accurately described as “a 43-year-old vs a 39-year-old with a combined 27-year layoff” by UFC employee RJ Clifford.

How can it be that a farcical senior league WMMA bout will be the biggest of the year?

There are two reasons:

1. Netflix kicks the crap out of Paramount+
   It’s not even close. Per MediaPlayNews, Netflix has 325 million subscribers against Paramount+’s 79.1 million. YouTube may be the ultimate winner of the streaming wars, but Netflix is way, way ahead of any of the (dying) Hollywood incumbents.
   This is why Paramount is so desperate to overpay for WBD, without HBO, they are a dead letter, and even with HB,O they’ll be swimming upstream.

2. The UFC has no major stars
   The promotion has worked very hard over two decades to make the brand the star rather than the fighters. They’ve succeeded.
   Especially since Ari Emanuel and Silver Lake bought the UFC in 2016 and diverted Conor McGregor into a celebrity boxing match with Floyd Mayweather— a move that undid all the work of Zuffa to establish MMA as the combat sport and, ironically, created the space for Jake Paul and his entire brand of freak show boxing.
   Another problem, at least in the USA, is that the UFC no longer has any American champs, much less stars.

Check out this incredible graphic from A Feldman, who points out that “This is the first time since 2004 … that there have been no American men’s undisputed champions at all.”

One other problem with UFC White House event

Ari Emanuel’s 2016 decision to rebrand the UFC as an explicitly right-wing promotion openly supporting the presidential aspirations of Donald Trump may have been a genius way for the Democratic power broker to hedge his political bets, but it comes at a cost.

Namely, Donald Trump is even less popular in his second term than he was in his first — and we are all still waiting for another market crash or self-inflicted military disaster.

And unlike his first term, it’s not just the shitlibs that are riled up this time. Trump’s most serious political troubles are coming from his right.

From people like Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Thomas Massie, and….wait for it……

Sean Strickland, who’s not interested in fighting at the UFC White House event, saying, “Just to go hang out with the Epstein list? I’m good, dude.”

More recently, Strickland’s performance at the UFC Media Day gave Paramount one more PR headache (in a week full of them) it didn’t need.

It’s one thing when Strickland’s reverse minstrel show antics get bagged on by Bloody Elbow; it’s a different thing when Variety.com is going with “UFC Fighter Sean Strickland Goes on Sexist, Homophobic Tirade About Bad Bunny and Ronda Rousey During MMA League’s Media Day: ‘No One Gives a F— About Women’s Sports’” for its headline.

Here’s how they summed up Strickland’s comments on Carano-Rousey:

When asked about Netflix’s upcoming MMA match between Ronda Rousey and Gina Carano, Strickland called the event an “insane” idea and suggested they should fight “half naked.” He then joked about Rousey’s abusive relationship with her ex-boyfriend.

“Ronda Rousey can fight,” Strickland said. “That bitch can fight… I think she lost a few fights to her ex, but bitch can fight.”

He then said of Carano, “I like Gina. She’s like super conservative. She was hot, you know. I was like a kid when she fought. I may have jerked off to her once or twice back in the day.”

The former UFC middleweight champ went on to say that “no one gives a fuck about women’s sports.” He added, “There’s nothing wrong with women. They do great things. They cook, they clean.”

Strickland had more to say to Newsweek Sports:

“Ronda Rousey’s gonna steamroll her. Ronda Rousey’s an Olympian that was a multi-time world champion. Gina Carano was pretty at a time when women’s MMA sucked - I mean, it’s still not very good, but when Gina Carano was fighting it was significantly worse.

“Ronda Rousey’s going to f*cking steamroll her, and we’re just gonna watch two middle-aged women f*cking going through menopause fight each other. … I don’t know. I have no interest in that. Who gives a f*ck?”

Based on the positive reactions of many UFC fans, Strickland is still getting over with at least a segment of the UFC’s shrinking, reactionary hardcore audience.

Based on the reactions of almost everyone else, Rousey vs. Carano not being associated with Strickland, the UFC, or Donald Trump is probably a big win for Netflix.

They’re not looking to pander to a small right-wing niche audience like the Paramount Trump UFC. Netflix is looking for mass appeal.

That’s why they didn’t buy the rights to stream UFC numbered events, despite being TKO’s first choice for a new media partner.

Sorry, Sean, you’re not even in Ronda & Gina’s league

The punchline to Strickland’s unfunny comedy act is that the dude is a boring ass fighter who never compared to Ronda Rousey or Gina Carano as an MMA draw.

Strickland’s career high-water marks were UFC 293, when he beat Israel Adesanya for the middleweight title, and UFC 302, when he fought in the co-main of Islam Makhachev vs. Dustin Poirier.

Thanks to Conor McGregor, we have reason to believe UFC 302 drew 500,000 views. UFC 293 is believed to have done around the same.

Sean’s high-water mark was probably UFC on ESPN 28 in 2021, which some rando on Reddit says drew over 900,000 viewers.

Let’s compare to Gina Carano and Ronda Rousey’s biggest fights:

And unlike Sean, a career b-sider and co-main guy, both Carano and Rousey were marquee headliners, not to mention trailblazers.

Netflix and MVP are feasting on brand equity built years ago

Rousey vs. Carano is the same play as Tyson vs. Paul in that it’s a name-recognition/brand equity play aimed at low information (casual) fans who don’t know a great fight from a shitty one, don’t follow combat sports, but will pause to look at a train wreck, especially if there’s a name they recognize involved.

Like Mike Tyson, both Carano and Rousey have done things to damage their reputations with the broader public, but none of that stuff is the first thing people remember about them.

Mike, Gina, and Ronda are famous for fighting back in the day.

Tyson’s brand was built on ESPN, HBO, and pay-per-view (PPV) by Cus D’Amato and Don King in the 1990s and 2000s.

Carano’s brand was built on CBS by Gary Shaw of EliteXC and Scott Coker of Strikeforce in the 2000s.

Rousey’s brand was built on Showtime by Scott Coker of Strikeforce and on Fox Sports and PPV by Dana White and the UFC in the 2010s.

Despite the vast majority of professional WMMA fights having been held in the UFC since Rousey retired, no female fighters of the late 2010s or 2020s (so far) will ever be able to draw millions of eyeballs on Netflix or any other platform.

That’s because the UFC isn’t in the star-making business and, frankly, has no idea how to promote WMMA.

The UFC’s “throw ‘em in the meat grinder” approach just doesn’t work in WMMA.

MMA is a complex, brutal, individual sport that makes the kind of sustained championship run necessary to build any brand equity for a fighter very hard to acquire.

Women’s MMA has such a tiny talent pool that the UFC’s approach to fight booking and promotion will no more produce another Rousey or Carano than LLMs will stop hallucinating bullshit.

It’s no accident the UFC didn’t promote this bout

Ronda Rousey has said the UFC wasn’t interested in Rousey-Carano.

Which makes sense, the UFC has a formula, and one-off freak show fights are not it.

On the other hand, when Rousey was a UFC champ, the promotion reportedly worked to book Gina Carano for what would have been a big-selling PPV in the 2014-15 period.

Unfortunately, Dana White screwed the pooch on that shit:

Per Carano on The Ariel Helwani Show in 2019:

”When Ronda Rousey became popular, they finally called for a meeting. I walked in to a restaurant and there were big, muscly guys on the table in the middle of Hollywood and I remember thinking ‘what took you so long?’ They were like ‘okay, we’d love to offer you a million dollars. We’d love to have that fight.’

“And I was like ‘well, that sounds great. I’m going to need you to do me a favor. I’ve been acting now and I’m not active in any gym. So you’re going to have to give me some time to build a team which is not an easy thing. … You got to sit on this for six months, Dana.’

“… It was a nice dinner and we all left positive. I left stoked. Okay, this makes sense. This is my moment,” she added. “And then, the next day Dana was out there talking about me, talking about my name, telling people that they were going to sign me. And I don’t even have a team yet. I was like ‘that’s not what we discussed. You were supposed to give me at least six months to find a team.’ And then he started trying to put on the pressure through the media.

“It was a bummer because I told him over a text message that’s not what we talked about. I need time. … Then, he kept on doing that. I was still kind of searching for a team and feeling all that pressure. And then he sent me a text message that said, ‘this b*tch is something effing us around.’ I sent a text message back saying I think you sent that to the wrong person. And he said I don’t think I did. And that was the last conversation we had over a text message. Because I don’t think that was the kind of environment I wanted to come back into. So I just cut all communication after that text.”

Even though the fight fans wanted to see most was Rousey vs Cris Cyborg, the Rousey-Carano bout would have been a sensation in 2015, despite Carano having been out of the game for years at that point.

Rousey-Carano and Rousey-Cyborg go perfectly with other superfights that Dana fucked up, like Fedor Emelianenko vs. Brock Lesnar and/or Randy Couture, Georges St-Pierre vs. Anderson Silva, Anderson Silva vs. Jon Jones, and Francis Ngannou vs. Jon Jones.

The UFC never could build fighters

Dana White’s self-defeating assholism aside, the UFC’s entire approach is the opposite of the methods that Gary Shaw and Scott Coker used to build WMMA, Gina Carano, and Ronda Rousey.

Love it or hate it, Shaw and Coker made no bones about certain fighters having most-favored-nation status.

Carano generally fought hand-picked opponents, often undersized athletes moving up in weight class.

All the same, Gina did what she needed to do, which not every fighter given a hand-picked opponent can say they did (RIP Kimbo Slice), and she won AND put on entertaining performances.

More importantly, Gina’s fights would be the only WMMA bouts on the card. She was a novelty act tucked in between Frank Shamrock, Renzo Gracie, Kimbo Slice, Nick Diaz, Robbie Lawler, and the like.

The only time Shaw bothered to put two WMMA bouts on a card was when he put Cris Cyborg on the bottom of a card featuring Carano, so as to build up anticipation for Carano-Cyborg.

That’s because, unlike Rousey, when Shaw had run out the string as far as he could, Carano was willing to step in there against Cris Cyborg and take her beating like a champ.

Rousey didn’t need as much protection, being an Olympic medalist in a pool of mostly semi-pro athletes, but she got similar treatment from Scott Coker in Strikeforce in an era when Dana White was still proudly insisting the UFC would never feature WMMA.

Nonetheless, Strikeforce didn’t shit out slop like the UFC does. They had a limited number of events a year and even fewer network TV slots, so they made them count.

Most WMMA fights were tucked away on Strikeforce Challenger cards, and it was only when Rousey began to emerge as a star that she was moved up to bigger events.

And even when Rousey was headlining major Strikeforce cards on Showtime, there would be at most one other WMMA bout tucked away on the prelims.

Contrast with the UFC’s approach of filling out cards with whatever fights they can scrape up and their insistence on making every title fight a five-rounder.

UFC fans are getting so much meh WMMA content featuring whatever the opposite of charismatic stars is, that they are (rightfully) sick of that shit.

There’s one more reason why another Ronda Rousey won’t ever emerge from the UFC.

It doesn’t fit with their brand.

Ari Emanuel’s Donald Trump’s UFC has no room for WMMA

The 2016 decision to change the UFC’s approach from a “come one, come all” method to a “we’re going to pick a side in the most divisive political fight in modern US history” coincided with Ari Emanuel et al. buying the promotion from the Fertitta brothers, who had always adhered to nonpartisanship and a strict speech policy for athletes.

And the “freedom of speech” policy that has led the promotion giving yahoos like Sean Strickland a platform to do racist insult comedy routines is not conducive to building the kind of women’s empowerment narratives that powered Rousey into mainstream consciousness.

Don’t remember?

Check these headlines from back in the day:

• Ronda Rousey standing up for women's empowerment by breaking down gender barriers

• Why a UFC champion is your new feminist hero (Yes, I'm serious)

• Ronda Rousey Is Changing Our Understanding Of Feminism, Athleticism And Body Image

The UFC leaned into that shit, hard.

For one thing, it was great for business.

Rousey headlined PPVs estimated to have sold over 1 million buys, and she dramatically improved the UFC’s demographics and gave them a whole new set of sponsors to approach for ad deals.

Point being, enjoy Ronda Rousey vs. Gina Carano if that’s your thing, but keep in mind we won’t see their kind again.

Nate Wilcox is the Editor-in-Chief of The MMA Draw. He founded BloodyElbow in 2007 and sold it in 2024.