Maybe it’s some kind of post-Valentine’s rebuttal, but it’s been a time of cutthroat betrayals in the fight business. Last week Zuffa Boxing snatched away Conor Benn from longtime caretaker Eddie Hearn in what struck many fans as an act of outright disloyalty, even as cooler minds called it “business.” What rubbed people the wrong way was that Hearn stuck with Benn through thick and thin, while Benn stuck with Hearn through thick.
Then, of course, Ronda Rousey, one of the key figures in the UFC’s ultimate success, returned fire on Dana White and Co. by signing up to fight Gina Carano for Most Valuable Production’s first foray into MMA. That fight will stream this May on Netflix, a juggernaut of such immense proportion in the streaming business that it makes Paramount+ dine at the kid’s table.
Advertisement
Rousey going head-to-head with Dana White? Netflix versus Paramount+? MVP taking on the UFC? Just a few weeks before the UFC White House card?
See, now we’re talking.
It took a village, but we’ve arrived in a real-life pro-wrestling moment in combat sports where the storylines become just as big as the players. It just happens that turncoats are in fashion this winter, and they’re stitched with highly sustainable drama.
And if there’s one thing that stands out as we kick into a rivalry we never suspected is that Ronda and Dana know each other very well. So well, in fact, that they understand exactly which blows can be felt. Back in the day, when Rousey was breaking the UFC through on global media platforms that would never deign to peek in on the goings-on in the Octagon, Dana sung Rousey’s praises louder than Beyonce ever could.
Advertisement
“I’m a huge Ronda Rousey fan,” he said a thousand different ways. “She’s extremely talented. What I like most about her is she’s mean and nasty.”
Hell yes, she is. The 39-year-old Rousey had been in talks with the UFC about doing the Carano fight, but it couldn’t be worked out. She was jilted enough to toss a match over her shoulder on the bridge that delivered her to transcendent status in the fight game, perhaps understanding that it can fully be rebuilt at a later date (this is all business, after all). But right now, in a fortified fit of fancy, Rousey doesn’t want to just have a one-off mega-fight with the 43-year-old Carano.
She said she wants to kick up a war with the UFC.
“It’s a dream fight and a superfight and everything,” she said to her MVP business partner Nakisa Bidarian on the first episode of “MVP Uncut.” “But I feel like the story behind it is not just this fight, but a lot of it is MVP vs. UFC. And that’s where I’m going to f***ing go really hard in the trenches. Because they’re suffering from a lack of competition …”
Advertisement
Here Bidarian, an ex-exec of the UFC who founded MVP with Jake Paul, got so tickled that he let out a giggle. It was all music to his ears, and Rousey broke into some serious easy-listening jazz after that.
“They can’t just make a class-action lawsuit every couple of years at the cost of doing business. And so, I’m really trying to help Dana out,” she continued. “And if anyone has been groomed to be his apprentice, it’s been me. I think I’d be the most favorite adversary he’s ever had.”
Mean. Nasty. And if you watched Rousey circa 2013, she’s the same “do-nothing b****” she so famously professed to be. This was the Rousey that everyone fell in love with. This was the one who wouldn’t be denied, who wouldn’t stand for second place.
Advertisement
It’s not like they thawed Rousey out of a cryopreserved chamber, but she has raged back to life as if the intervening years don’t exist. Gone, with an overnight shake of the Etch-a-Sketch, is the Ronda who disappeared at the first sign of adversity. Many MMA fans got off the Rousey train after the way she handled herself upon losing to Holly Holm at UFC 193 in 2015. Rousey hid her face from the public and proceeded to sulk for a full year. It didn’t help that she avoided media ahead of her next (and last) fight with Amanda Nunes at UFC 207.
To this day she’s never admitted going about things the wrong way with her fan base after the losses. Instead, she blamed fans and media for turning on her. All those hard feelings remain intact, and it’s a definitive subplot as she makes her return to cage-fighting. Reinvention, it should be reminded, is forever possible in fighting, especially in the age of scattered attention.
What gives it the WWE drama is that, through it all, Dana has stood by Rousey as a guardian to her legacy. She was inducted into the UFC’s Hall of Fame in 2018. Whenever White talks about the success of the UFC, he always comes around to Rousey. She can do no wrong in his eyes, and he’s doted on her through the years even as many winced at her behavior.
“She’s f***ing fascinating,” Dana said at one point. “She’s the greatest athlete I’ve ever worked with on every level. Everybody talks about how I’m always Ronda this and Ronda that. It’s hard not to be Ronda this and Ronda that when you deal with her.”
Yesterday’s friends are often tomorrow’s rivals in the fight game.
(Ethan Miller via Getty Images)
He dealt with her recently, all right, and he didn’t work out a deal for her to fight Carano. Dana had to have known what was coming next. Perhaps that’s why he wished her well when asked about it in Houston after the UFC’s latest event this past Saturday.
Advertisement
“Her and I have been talking about this since last year,” he said, as fatherly as he could muster. “It just didn’t work out, and I’m happy for her. Listen, me and Gina are in a really good place we weren’t at at one point, and I’m happy for both of them.”
We’ll see how it shakes out. But the Ronda that he was so protective of during the delicate years is back. She wants to see MVP give the UFC a dose of its own medicine. The attitude is the same, but — and maybe this something she picked up from her venture in pro wrestling — her faction has changed. Now she’s running with Jake Paul and Nakisa Bidarian and Netflix. This is an anti-UFC collective if there ever was one.
It’s business, it’s business. Just like when Dana and Nick Kahn signed Conor Benn out from Eddie Hearn’s grasp for eight digits for a single fight, it’s just business. The difference is that it’s also personal, and right now not everyone is minding their own business.
“Look,” Bidarian told Rousey in that same clip, “if [MVP] gets that co-main done, and I’m hoping we get that co-main done, it’s going to be an unbelievable one-two punch, you know?”
Advertisement
History has told us the UFC will absorb the shots just fine, but these are storylines to keep an eye on.
