The UFC White House card delivered 17 million viewers and 7 million viewers on average in the United States, and it didn\u2019t take long for Ronda Rousey and Jake Paul to celebrate the fact that the recent MVP MMA card on Netflix produced bigger ratings.<\/p>\n
The card headlined by Rousey\u2019s return from retirement against Gina Carano also had 17 million viewers, but the event averaged 9.3 million viewers in the U.S., which obviously beats the UFC White House card that aired on Paramount+. That led to Rousey continuing her very public campaign against UFC chief business officer Hunter Campbell when she said \u201cLmao! Kiss my ass Hunter Campbell<\/a>\u201d on Twitter and Paul touted the success of the MVP MMA event by adding \u201cas a boxing promoter it feels good waking up today being the biggest MMA promoter.<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n But UFC legend Matt Brown isn\u2019t so sure that Rousey and Paul should be taking such a victory lap, especially after the White House card is still being talked about non-stop more than a week later while the MVP MMA show feels like an afterthought now.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know what they\u2019re celebrating there,\u201d Brown said on the latest episode of The Fighter vs. The Writer. \u201cIt\u2019s already forgotten that card happened. The only reason we\u2019re talking about it now is because they\u2019re doing their victory lap or whatever. I don\u2019t know what Ronda\u2019s trying to get out of instigating [with] Hunter Campbell. Dude\u2019s got a nice salary, he lives a good life I\u2019m sure, he\u2019s working on building big things, I don\u2019t know what are you doing? What do you think you just accomplished?<\/p>\n \u201cI highly doubt Hunter Campbell is [sitting around saying] \u2018oh shit, they got more viewers than us, what are we going to do?\u2019 No, he\u2019s eating dinner at a five-star Michelin restaurant and talking to his buddies and about the Conor McGregor-Max Holloway fight. I don\u2019t know where these people think that this stuff actually matters that much.\u201d<\/p>\n While Paul and business partner Nakisa Bidarian have said that Most Valuable Promotions is going to continue promoting MMA events moving forward, none of those plans have been cemented with a second card after Rousey vs. Carano.<\/p>\n Rousey has already stated numerous times that she\u2019s retired and won\u2019t fight again so that\u2019s not an option. Carano hinted at another fight but there\u2019s little chance she would pull the same kind of ratings as Rousey, who was a superstar during her run with the UFC.<\/p>\n Brown believes it all really comes down to the future because MVP MMA may have produced great ratings for one card but that\u2019s not a threat to the UFC, especially with Conor McGregor\u2019s return on the horizon in July.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you\u2019re building something meaningful, sustainable, long-lasting and actually threatening their business in some capacity, now things might be a little different,\u201d Brown explained. \u201cYou were able to muster together an event, which even per capita and I don\u2019t even know if they have those kinds of numbers in entertainment, but if you look at 9 million viewers versus 300 million subscribers [on Netflix] or whatever the number is versus 7 million viewers and 50 million subscribers [on Paramount+] that percentage is way higher.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m just not sure what they\u2019re trying to accomplish. If it came out the next day and they\u2019re like this is going to be our next show and we\u2019re going to beat you again, something like that, all right cool. I don\u2019t think Hunter, Dana [White], Ari [Emanuel], TKO Group, I don\u2019t think a single one of these people are losing one second of sleep over this.\u201d<\/p>\n While the first batch of ratings for the UFC White House card have been revealed, the company still has to release the full global numbers so the overall viewership is going to increase quite a bit.<\/p>\n As far as comparing that to the MVP MMA card, Brown argues the biggest problem Paul faces moving forward is that his lone event headlined by Rousey vs. Carano came and went rather quickly, but the UFC White House card is a juggernaut still dominating the conversation.<\/p>\n Like it or not, Brown knows these things matter and he just doesn\u2019t buy Paul somehow actually threatening the UFC as an MMA promoter.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re talking about it two weeks later, the aftermath of the [UFC White House] event,\u201d Brown said. \u201cAfter the Ronda-MVP card, we talked about it the next day and we\u2019re like that was about what we expected. Cool. Really good production. OK, let\u2019s move on now. That was the end of it.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think anyone actually does really care that much. Ronda\u2019s taking anything she can get. Jake Paul, he\u2019s promoting fights so he\u2019s going to try to show victories any way he can, but I don\u2019t know why Ronda cares. You got your money. Go chill. Go to your yacht and go chill. It\u2019s over now. What do think you\u2019re doing?\u201d<\/p>\n The battle for ratings supremacy matters a whole lot more if MVP MMA really builds itself into a business that actually challenges the UFC. Until then, Brown says he knows enough about the UFC to recognize nobody is sweating the competition.<\/p>\n \u201cMVP\u2019s got a long way to go and I\u2019ve said it from the beginning, they\u2019re barking up the wrong tree,\u201d Brown said. \u201cYou don\u2019t mess with the UFC and its game. You\u2019re trying to fight in their own arena, and I think that\u2019s just a bad game to play. We\u2019ll see what they do. They\u2019re pretty smart people. If you\u2019re the promoter, I understand taking a victory lap here. You\u2019re the promoter. That\u2019s what you should do. You\u2019re not going to concede and say \u2018oh the UFC is doing great!\u2019 You\u2019re promoting, I get that. You\u2019ve got to take what you can get.<\/p>\n \u201cAll I can say, hopefully they do keep something sustainable. I hope they do something good. I think it would be good for the sport having something sustainable. They\u2019re in a tough battle here. The UFC\u2019s not who you want to f*ck with.\u201d<\/p>\n Listen to new episodes of The Fighter vs. The Writer every Tuesday with audio only versions of the podcast available on Apple Podcasts<\/a>, Spotify<\/a>, and iHeartRadio<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The UFC White House card delivered 17 million viewers and 7 million viewers on average in the United…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":755158,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,1347,785,45518,270175,324901,1591,85,787,1396],"class_list":["post-755157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-latest-news","tag-mma","tag-mmaf-podcast-network","tag-mvp-mma","tag-mvp-mma-news","tag-podcasts","tag-sports","tag-ufc","tag-ufc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/755157","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=755157"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/755157\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/755158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=755157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=755157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=755157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}