I became a UFC fan in 2008 and was organizing events, including MMA, by 2014. I couldn't have imagined that in 2026 we'd be talking about Netflix running its first MMA card and the UFC White House card around the corner.

That's worth saying first. This moment is real.

And before anything else — what MVP pulled off deserves real respect. They are a young organization. Every Jake Paul boxing event they've put together, and now this — a Netflix MMA card with legitimate production value and global distribution — is genuinely hard to do. Most promotions never get close to this level. The fact that they're operating at this scale is not a small thing.

A lot of people called this the biggest fight card of the year. I disagree.

The names were big in the sense that they had audiences. But there's a reason most of them aren't with the UFC anymore. And there were essentially two different fighter categories on this card — and people are mixing them up.

The headliners: Francis, Ronda, Gina, Nate. Some who came back from retirement — some after seven, some after ten years away. They have real followings. That's exactly why they were booked. But the following built inside the UFC don't automatically transfer to a new home, especially when there's no story attached to the fight itself.

The rest of the card: fighters who are out there every weekend under a different umbrella, making pennies. Some journeymen. Some good fighters.

Plenty of mismatches. Ngannou and JDS fights were the worst in that regard.

There were a few bright spots. Salahdine Parnasse was genuinely impressive, probably the best fight on the card. That's exactly the kind of talent MVP needs more of. The problem is the UFC has basically everybody worth signing already locked up. That's not MVP's fault. It's just the reality of the market they're operating in.

The production was something else entirely.

Netflix money means Netflix standards. What they built on the production side was genuinely impressive. I know because I've worked with some of those people. They came out of HBO, ESPN, the highest levels of sports broadcasting — and they are really, really good.

But here's what nobody is talking about: a lot of them are freelancers.

The UFC's on-camera talent is exclusive to that brand. Same faces, every event, year after year. That's not just a staffing decision — that's brand equity. Those people become the voice of the sport in people's living rooms.

The people MVP hired this weekend work most weekends. For whoever is calling. MVP can't keep them busy full-time, so they'll take other gigs. Which means next event, it might be different people. You never build the same well-oiled machine the UFC has when your production team is reassembled from scratch each time.

I learned this the hard way running events. First show, second show — it's always a learning curve, even with great individual talent. The team chemistry is everything, and that only comes with repetition.

If MVP and Netflix don't find a way to lock these people in, the production quality will be inconsistent. And inconsistency is the enemy of brand building. This is the hardest operational challenge in front of them — and it's invisible from the outside.

Now the arena.

The house was pretty empty until the last three or four fights. Online, on X, people were complaining that the venue looked dead. Part of that was the LED lights around the seats — they actually made empty sections look even emptier on camera.

This used to be a boxing problem the UFC solved. UFC audiences show up for the prelims. They're invested in the whole card. When I ran events, we built the fight card specifically to make sure local ticket sellers and early supporters filled the seats from the first fight. You don't leave that to chance.

What I noticed with MVP is they captured spectators, not necessarily fans. People who came for the event, for the spectacle, for the headliners. Those people don't sit through four prelim fights. Real combat sports fans do.

That distinction matters more than it looks. Spectators don't come back. Fans do.

This isn't about picking on MVP. It's about understanding the phenomenon.

And the fights themselves had no story.

In WWE, in boxing, in the UFC — there's always a heel and a face. A villain and a hero. It's as old as human nature. People need a reason to care before the bell rings. Muhammad Ali vs. Frazier. Conor vs. Khabib. You don't just watch those fights — you're invested in them. You have a side.

Gina Carano and Ronda Rousey had zero beef. No history. The only reason they were fighting is they're both women and both famous. Francis and his opponent had zero reason to fight other than they were available. Perry and Diaz were the closest to a BMF title, but Diaz looked very much out of shape, and it was hard to watch at times.

Between Netflix and MVP's own social media presence, they have more marketing firepower than almost anyone in this sport right now. And it shows — the prelims were free on YouTube and drew 250,000 concurrent viewers. For a first event, that's a real number.

But the next question they'll have to answer is whether the fights themselves can carry the weight without all that machine behind them. When the platform is this loud, it's hard to know what's actually selling. The real test is whether the audience comes back because they fell in love with the sport — or just because something big was happening that weekend.

There's also something else underneath all of this.

The broadcast kept referencing the UFC. Every few sentences. It felt less like a promotion building its own identity and more like a score being settled.

There's clearly personal history between the people involved. Jake Paul, Ronda, Francis, Nakisa, Ariel — there's a lot of bad blood with Dana across that entire roster. Add the politics: Netflix was allegedly close to a deal with the UFC before Dana went to Paramount, and that left a sour taste.

None of that is a reason to watch a fight. And when it bleeds into the broadcast, it costs you. Because if there was no UFC, most of the people on that card wouldn't have the platforms they have today. Spending your own airtime reminding people of that isn't the flex it feels like.

The strongest thing MVP could do is build their own identity so completely that the comparison becomes irrelevant. They have the platform to do it.

Is this competition for the UFC? Not yet.

The UFC is twenty, maybe thirty years ahead of everyone else. Hundreds of employees. Hundreds of fighters under exclusive contract. Their own production facility, training facilities, and headquarters. A real business generating real sustained profit.

But there's a more important distinction nobody is making.

When the UFC signed with ESPN, they got $1.5 billion for their rights. When Paramount came in, that number was $7.7 billion. Those partners were competing to pay the UFC for what they had already built. The UFC owned everything — the fighters, the footage, the brand, the rights. That's what commanded those numbers.

With MVP and Netflix it feels more like a joint venture — they built this together from the ground up. And honestly, if Netflix called me tomorrow I'd say yes without blinking. Who wouldn't. But the interesting question nobody is asking is who owns the IP. In a JV structure that gets complicated fast, and the answer matters enormously for what this is actually worth long term.

As for competition?

The UFC isn't losing sleep over MVP. But they can't ignore them either. You can't ignore Netflix. You can't ignore Jake Paul's platform. You can't ignore that production talent. And you can't ignore what happens when all three are pointed in the same direction.

So what does this mean for the rest of us building in this space?

More people wanting to get into the fight business is good. More money flowing in is good. More eyeballs on the sport is good. Events like this lower the barrier — they show what's possible, they attract investors, they expand the audience.

But the gap between what Netflix and MVP produced and what a regional or mid-tier promotion can produce just got bigger and more visible. That gap is real. And the only way to close it is infrastructure.

Production quality. Consistent teams. A venue built for the sport. The ability to run events repeatedly without rebuilding everything from scratch each time.

That's what compounds. Not one spectacular night — the ability to show up the same way, every time, and get better at it.

This weekend was a great party. Genuinely impressive in ways that only someone who has tried to put on events at this level can fully appreciate.

But the UFC doesn't throw parties. It runs a business. And it has a thousand more nights ahead of it without needing to top itself every single time.

Best, Adam

P.S. If you're building in the combat sports space and want to think through the business side, reach out or apply at SKOVAX.CO​

P.P.S. If you're a fighter trying to figure out how to actually get paid in this sport, I put together a framework for exactly that. Get it at getpaidtofight.com ​

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