JPMorgan Global Technology, Media, and Communications Conference<\/a> and was asked about the decision by the UFC to pass on the fight when it was presented to them.<\/p>\nIt was pitched to us beforehand, and we did turn it down. That\u2019s to take nothing away from Netflix. First of all, they are a great partner, and clearly, they know what they\u2019re doing.<\/p>\n
They want big spectacle events, and they saw this (Rousey vs. Carano) as a big spectacle event. We\u2019re in the true MMA business on a meaningful, consistent basis, and we looked at this potential match-up, keep in mind, that there is a real art and skill to matchmaking. When you ask Hunter Campbell and Dana White what they think about that match-up prior to the fight happening, the answer we (Ari Emanuel and Shapiro) got back was that the fight will be over in twenty seconds. They were off by a few seconds.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t think a fight like that, the way it played out, is really good for MMA.<\/p>\n
Shapiro likened the fight to \u201cmore of a stunt than a meaningful MMA event.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ronda Rousey has stated she pitched the fight to the UFC and initially had an agreement for the fight to take place on the UFC\u2019s final pay-per-view before moving to its streaming model on Paramount+. When Gina Carano required more time to get ready for the fight, and the bout would have to take place on Paramount+, the deal fell apart. They went to Netflix and Most Valuable Promotions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Image Courtesy: CNBC TKO\u2019s president and chief operating officer, Mark Shapiro, downplayed the significance of Ronda Rousey and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":679875,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,49821,785,85],"class_list":["post-679874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-mark-shapiro","tag-mma","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/679874","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=679874"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/679874\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/679875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=679874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=679874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=679874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Mark-Shapiro-678x381.jpeg\" "\\"Mark")