Ronda Rousey's return to mixed martial arts has broken records, with Netflix reporting that 17 million people watched her comeback fight against Gina Carano. The former UFC women's bantamweight champion, who had not fought in a decade, submitted Carano in just 15 seconds during the main event of Jake Paul's debut MMA promotion.
The viewership figure surpasses previous free-to-air MMA records in the United States, including the UFC on Fox 1 event in 2011, which peaked at nearly 9 million viewers. Rousey's fight also outperformed notable bouts such as Kimbo Slice versus James Thompson on EliteXC, which drew 7.2 million viewers, and Tito Ortiz's knockout of Ken Shamrock on The Ultimate Fighter 3 Finale, watched by 6.5 million.
While Conor McGregor's pay-per-view fights have historically drawn large audiences—such as 4.3 million buys for his boxing match with Floyd Mayweather and 2.4 million for his UFC bout with Khabib Nurmagomedov—Rousey's free-to-air event on Netflix eclipsed those numbers in terms of total viewers.
Jake Paul and MVP CEO Nakisa Bidarian expressed satisfaction with the event's success, stating in a release: 'We're incredibly proud of what was accomplished alongside our partners at Netflix. We've received an overwhelming amount of interest from investors, strategic partners and fighters who want to be involved with MVP and the future of MVP MMA.' The company confirmed it is exploring options to stage more MMA events with distribution partners such as Netflix.
