Then, of course, Ronda Rousey, one of the key figures in the UFC’s ultimate success, fired back at Dana White and company by signing up to fight Gina Carano in Most Valuable Production’s first foray into MMA. That fight will air in May on Netflix, a giant of such immense proportions in the streaming business that it makes Paramount+ dine on the children’s table.
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Will Rosey go head to head with Dana White? Netflix versus Paramount+? MVP facing UFC? Just a few weeks before the UFC White House card?
Look, now we’re talking.
It took some effort, but we’ve reached a moment in real-life professional wrestling in combat sports where the stories become as big as the players. It just happens that traitors are in fashion this winter and are stitched with highly sustainable drama.
And if there is something that stands out when starting a rivalry that we never suspected, it is that Ronda and Dana know each other. very good. So well, in fact, that they understand exactly what bumps can be felt. Back in the day, when Rousey was taking the UFC by storm on global media platforms that would never deign to take a look at what was happening in the Octagon, Dana praised Rousey louder than Beyoncé ever could.
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“I’m a big fan of Ronda Rousey,” he said in a thousand different ways. “She’s so talented. What I like most about her is that she’s mean and nasty.”
Hell yes, it is. Rousey, 39, had been in talks with the UFC about doing the fight with Carano, but it couldn’t be resolved. She was abandoned long enough to throw a match over her shoulder on the bridge that took her to transcendent status in the fight game, perhaps understanding that she can completely rebuild herself at a later date (this is all businessafter all). But right now, in a strengthened fantasy attack, Rousey doesn’t want to just have a one-time megafight with the 43-year-old Carano.
She said she wants to start a war with the UFC.
“It’s a dream fight and a super fight and everything,” he told his MVP business partner, Nakisa Bidarian, on the first episode of “MVP Uncut.” “But I feel like the story behind this is not just this fight, but a lot of it is MVP vs. UFC. And that’s where I’m really going to be in the trenches. Because they’re suffering from a lack of competition…”
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Here Bidarian, a former UFC executive who founded MVP with Jake Paul, got so excited he giggled. It was all music to her ears, and after that, Rousey started playing serious, easy-listening jazz.
“They can’t just file a class action lawsuit every two years at the expense of doing business. That’s why I’m really trying to help Dana,” he continued. “And if anyone has been groomed to be your apprentice, it’s me. I think I’d be the favorite adversary I’ve ever had.”Mean. Disgusting. And if you saw Rousey around 2013, she’s the same “do nothing, bitch” she so famously professed to be. This was the Rousey everyone fell in love with. This was the one who would not be rejected, the one who would not run for second place.
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It’s not like Rousey was thawed out of a cryopreserved chamber, but she has come back to life as if the intervening years didn’t exist. Behind, with a nightly shake of the Etch-a-Sketch, was the Round that disappeared at the first sign of adversity. Many MMA fans got off the Rousey bandwagon after the way she handled herself losing to Holly Holm at UFC 193 in 2015. Rousey hid her face from the public and was in a bad mood for an entire year. It didn’t help that she avoided the media before her next (and final) fight with Amanda Nunes at UFC 207.
To this day, he has never admitted that he did things wrong with his fan base after losses. Instead, she blamed fans and the media for turning against her. All of those resentments remain intact, and it’s a definite subplot when she returns to cage fighting. It should be remembered that reinvention is always possible in fighting, especially in the era of dispersed attention.
What gives WWE drama is that, despite everything, Dana has supported Rousey as the guardian of her legacy. She was inducted into the UFC Hall of Fame in 2018. Whenever she talks about the success of the UFC, she always addresses Rousey. In his eyes, she can do no wrong, and he has adored her over the years, even as many shuddered at her behavior.
“She’s fucking fascinating,” Dana said at one point. “She’s the best athlete I’ve ever worked with at every level. Everyone talks about how I’m always Ronda this and Ronda that. It’s hard not to be Ronda this and Ronda that when you’re dealing with her.”
Yesterday’s friends are often tomorrow’s rivals in the fighting game.
(Ethan Miller via Getty Images)
He dealt with her recently, okay, and didn’t make any deal for her to fight Carano. Dana had to have known what was coming next. Maybe that’s why he wished him well when asked about it in Houston after the latest UFC event last Saturday.
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“She and I have been talking about this since last year,” he said, as paternally as he could. “It just didn’t work out and I’m happy for her. Listen, Gina and I are in a really good place that we weren’t in at one point, and I’m happy for both of us.”
We’ll see how it shakes out. But the Round that protected so much during the delicate years has returned. He wants to see MVP give the UFC a dose of its own medicine. The attitude is the same, but (and perhaps it’s something he learned from his adventure in professional wrestling) his faction has changed. Now he runs with Jake Paul and Nakisa Bidarian and Netflix. This is an anti-UFC collective if there ever was one.
They are business, they are business. Just like when Dana and Nick Kahn hired Conor Benn out of Eddie Hearn’s reach for eight figures for a single fight, it’s just business. The difference is that it is also personal and right now not everyone is minding their own business.
“Look,” Bidarian told Rousey in the same clip, “if (MVP) gets that co-lead, and I hope we do, it’s going to be an amazing one-two punch, you know?”
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History has told us that the UFC will absorb the blows well, but these are stories to pay attention to.