Dana White and Hunter Campbell had a good idea that Ronda Rousey was going to dispatch Gina Carano rather quickly and that ultimately played a part in deciding not to promote the fight, which eventually ended up under Jake Paul\u2019s Most Valuable Promotions with the event airing live on Netflix this past Saturday night.<\/p>\n
In her first fight back in a decade, Rousey scored an early takedown and snatched her signature armbar submission to finish Carano in just 17 seconds. Of course, Rousey was a massive favorite heading into the fight and the result wasn\u2019t totally unexpected, especially after the Olympic bronze medalist in judo became a superstar dismantling her opposition in similar fashion after arriving in the UFC.<\/p>\n
In the leadup to the event, Rousey routinely bashed Campbell, who is the UFC\u2019s chief business officer, and it turns out her anger might have stemmed from his opinion on the fight against Carano.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re in the true MMA business in a meaningful, consistent basis,\u201d TKO Group Holdings president and chief operating officer Mark Shapiro during the J.P. Morgan Global Technology, Media and Communications Conference on Monday. \u201cWhen we looked at this potential matchup, keep in mind there\u2019s a real art and skill to matchmaking. When you ask Hunter Campbell and Dana White what they think about that matchup prior to the fight happening, the answers we got back \u2014 and I mean Ari Emanuel and myself \u2014 was that fight will be over in 20 seconds. They were off by a few seconds.\u201d<\/p>\n
Shapiro argued that kind of mismatch and quick ending for a fight that wasn\u2019t ultimately going to build towards anything else with Rousey openly stating she was only returning to face Carano and then retiring again just wasn\u2019t made for the UFC.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t believe that a fight like that, just the way that it played out, is really good for MMA,\u201d Shapiro said. \u201cEspecially because it\u2019s Netflix, and they have such an incredible global audience and it\u2019s a massive audience, a highly engaged audience that is going to sample \u2014 depending on what comes up on the front page with Netflix \u2014 for them to then go to that fight and think that\u2019s what MMA is, I don\u2019t believe is good for the sport longterm. We saw it that way and decided to pass on it.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Rousey maintained that she would never say a bad word about White or the UFC\u2019s former owners, Lorenzo and Frank Fertitta, a huge part of every interview and press conference leading up to the event was spent with her bashing TKO Group Holdings and how the UFC is running these days.<\/p>\n
For his part, Shapiro said the company still has the utmost respect for Rousey and her long list of accomplishments but they just had no interest in promoting the Carano fight.<\/p>\n
\u201cTaking nothing away from the legend obviously that Ronda Rousey is and the win that she got,\u201d Shapiro said. \u201cI guarantee incredible viewership numbers that Netflix will soon report. But for us, it was more of a stunt than a meaningful MMA event.\u201d<\/p>\n
Of course, Shapiro understood why the event appealed to Netflix because the executives behind the largest streaming platform have repeatedly stated that the company is only interested in big marquee events when it comes to sports programming.<\/p>\n
Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos has stated that the streamer doesn\u2019t want to invest in a full season package for any major professional sport but landing special events like the deal with the NFL to air games on Christmas make perfect sense.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s why Netflix was previously pursuing part of the UFC\u2019s broadcast rights package but the network was only interested in the numbered events (pay-per-views) rather than the multitude of Fight Night cards that decorate the calendar.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was pitched to us beforehand and we did turn it down,\u201d Shapiro said about Rousey vs. Carano. \u201cThat\u2019s to take nothing away from Netflix. First of all, they\u2019re a great partner and clearly they know what they\u2019re doing. Across the board in every genre right now. You don\u2019t get to 300 million or 350 million [subscribers] for nothing. Their content offering is unique and really distinct and really has something for everyone.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re in the big event business. They\u2019ve been very clear about that. They\u2019re not looking necessarily to buy out leagues. That\u2019s why they did the Major League Baseball opener. That\u2019s why they\u2019ll do the Homerun Derby. That\u2019s why they just did a five game package with the NFL. They want big, spectacle events and they saw this as a big spectacle event.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dana White and Hunter Campbell had a good idea that Ronda Rousey was going to dispatch Gina Carano…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":680998,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,1347,785,270175,324901,85,787,1396],"class_list":["post-680997","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-latest-news","tag-mma","tag-mvp-mma","tag-mvp-mma-news","tag-sports","tag-ufc","tag-ufc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/680997","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=680997"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/680997\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/680998"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=680997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=680997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=680997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}