Rousey vs Carano on Netflix Exposes the UFC’s Monopoly Problem + UFC Houston Picks

Nobody in the MMA business willingly hands power away. Dana White has spent two decades making sure of that. So when Netflix confirmed Rousey vs Carano this week — not in the UFC, not in the octagon, in Jake Paul’s hexagon cage on the world’s biggest streaming platform — it landed differently than a typical nostalgia announcement. This is not just two retired fighters chasing one last paycheque. This is the clearest signal yet that the UFC’s grip on professional MMA is no longer as uncontested as it once was.

The fight is set for May 16, 2026, at the Intuit Dome in Inglewood, California. It will air live on Netflix under the MVP Promotions banner — Jake Paul’s company — and it will be staged in a six-sided hexagonal cage under unified MMA rules at 145 lbs. Ronda Rousey, who last competed in 2016, returns to professional MMA against Gina Carano, who has not fought since losing to Cris Cyborg at Strikeforce on CBS in 2009. The competitive stakes are not the story. What the fight represents for the business of MMA is very much. This Saturday, meanwhile, the UFC arrives at the Toyota Center in Houston with a main event that has genuine intrigue: former middleweight champion Sean Strickland (+205) against surging seven-fight winner Anthony Hernandez (-275), a fight that doubles as a referendum on whether Hernandez is ready for the biggest stage he has seen.

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Rousey vs Carano on Netflix Is Not About the Fight

Fred Garcia’s immediate reaction was the honest one: fifteen years too late. And in a purely competitive sense, he is right. Carano retired in 2009. By the time Rousey was finishing opponents in under a minute and headlining pay-per-views, Gina Carano was a memory in MMA circles and a movie star in Hollywood. Their competitive primes never overlapped. This fight, as a sporting contest, has a ceiling.

But that framing misses what is actually happening. The platform behind this fight is Netflix — 300 million subscribers, the same platform that transformed WWE programming from a cable afterthought into must-see television globally. MVP Promotions, run by Jake and Logan Paul, has already demonstrated it can move audiences in ways traditional MMA promotions cannot touch. Jake Paul versus Mike Tyson drew an estimated 65 million households. The UFC’s biggest Paramount+ events draw a fraction of that. Rousey herself has said publicly that her Netflix debut will outdraw the UFC on Paramount. That claim is not as outrageous as it sounds.

The legitimate counterargument is the Bellator precedent. Viacom had deep pockets. Scott Coker had a roster. Neither meaningfully dented the UFC’s position. The sceptical view — and it deserves to be taken seriously — is that Netflix runs one or two events a year, makes some fighters very wealthy, and disappears without changing the fundamental landscape, exactly as Bellator’s big-name nostalgia bouts came and went without shaking the UFC’s monopoly. Dave Simon addressed this directly on this week’s Ringside Report MMA: “Yeah, it’s not like a promotion promotion.” The concession matters. Nobody should pretend Netflix is about to build a roster and run a weekly Fight Night equivalent.

What Netflix changes is leverage, and leverage is what matters most to the 500-odd fighters currently under UFC contract. When AEW launched in 2019, WWE talent began earning more money — not because AEW had a better product, but because suddenly there was a second billionaire willing to write cheques. The same mechanism applies here. If MVP Promotions can credibly offer a platform and a paycheque, fighters have somewhere to point to during negotiations. The UFC’s stranglehold on fighter compensation has persisted precisely because there has been nowhere else to credibly go. That calculation is beginning — slowly, carefully — to shift.

## Reality Check: Netflix Is the Most Credible Threat to the UFC Since Bellator Folded

> **The Reality:** Bellator had money. It did not have Netflix. The distinction matters enormously. This is not a competing promotion with a full roster threatening the UFC’s market share fight by fight. It is a platform with 300 million subscribers that has demonstrated it can make anything it touches appointment viewing — and it just put Ronda Rousey on its MMA card. Dana White should be taking notes, not dismissing this.

The Fight This Should Have Been — and the Text Message That Explains Everything

The uncomfortable truth about Rousey vs Carano is that the fight the sport actually wanted was never Rousey versus Gina. It was Rousey versus Cris Cyborg. Cyborg beat Carano in 2009 — finished her convincingly in one round in what was at the time the biggest women’s MMA bout in history. Cyborg then went on to become one of the most dominant fighters, male or female, in the sport’s history. She is still active. She can still go. The fight that would settle the definitive women’s MMA legacy argument of the past fifteen years remains unmade.

Rousey’s choice of opponent tells its own story. She has spoken warmly about Carano paving the way for women in the sport and framed this fight as a form of tribute. That framing conveniently sidesteps the fact that Cyborg — who beat the woman Rousey is now fighting, and who went on to beat everyone else too — has been available and willing. The Cyborg fight carries real risk. The Carano fight does not. Rousey wins this one early, almost certainly by armbar, and the only genuine variable is whether Netflix’s production team quietly asks her to make it last longer than 90 seconds for the sake of the broadcast build-up.

The reason this fight is on Netflix rather than in the UFC traces back to a 2015 dinner between Gina Carano, Dana White, and Lorenzo Fertitta. Carano was offered $1 million to fight Rousey in the UFC. She asked for six months to step away from Hollywood and prepare properly. Negotiations broke down. Then Carano received a text from Dana White’s phone that read: “This bitch isn’t f***ing us around.” Carano replied that she thought it had gone to the wrong number. White’s response: “I don’t think I did.” That was their last exchange. Eleven years later, the fight belongs to Jake Paul.

UFC Houston: Why Strickland at +205 Deserves a Serious Look

UFC Fight Night 267 hits the Toyota Center in Houston this Saturday — prelims at 5 PM ET, main card at 8 PM ET on Paramount+. The main event is a middleweight fight with genuine title implications: former champion Sean Strickland (+205) against Anthony Hernandez (-275), who arrives on a seven-fight finishing streak that has included wins over Roman Dolidze, Brandon Allen, and Michel Pereira. The betting market is confident in Hernandez. The case for fading that confidence is worth making.

Strickland, at 34, is a former UFC middleweight champion — he beat Dricus du Plessis by split decision before losing the rematch — and whatever criticism can be levelled at his recent activity, his experience in five-round main events at major venues is simply not something Hernandez has. This is not the apex. This is a 10,000-person arena in Houston, the brightest lights Hernandez has stood under yet. Championship rounds against a former champion are a different test than what has been on his résumé so far, however impressive that résumé is. Brendan Allen, his most notable prior victim, is good. Strickland is a former champion with championship tools: front-kick-to-jab combinations that disrupt rhythm, octagon control, and a wiry, awkwardness that does not show up on highlight reels but makes him extremely difficult to solve over 25 minutes.

The case for Hernandez is straightforward: he finishes people in ways Strickland cannot, his grappling is elite, his cardio is elite, and if he can impose his wrestling-based pace over five rounds, he creates problems Strickland’s boxing-heavy game cannot answer. The knock on Strickland’s recent performances — not enough urgency, too much inactivity — is legitimate. A pressure finisher like Hernandez might be exactly what is needed to draw out Strickland’s best. Or Strickland’s experience eats him alive in the later rounds when the lights are brightest.

Geoff Neal vs Uroš Medić: Bet the Under, Back the Tornado

The co-main event deserves attention beyond the main event’s shadow. Uroš Medić is 12-3 as a professional, and here is the only number that matters: zero of his 15 professional bouts have gone to a decision. Every single fight has ended in a finish. He knocks people out, taps people out, or finishes himself. The fight has a finish — bet the under on total rounds, no matter the number. At +170 as the underdog against Geoff Neal, Medić represents genuine betting value. Neal has real credentials — wins over Belal Muhammad and others — but he is coming off a knockout loss to Carlos Prates and has gone 1-3 in his last four, losing to Ian Machado Garry, Shavkat Rakhmonov, and Prates. Medić stopped Muslim Salikhov in under a minute. This is a favourable matchup for a finishing machine.

The Carli Judice Line Movement: Something Is Going On

The most interesting betting signal of the week is not in the main event. Carli Judice opened as a -400 favourite against Juliana Miller in the opening prelim at women’s flyweight. She is now sitting at -800 — a 400-point move in 10 days on what is, on paper, a routine prelim opener. Compare that to every other fight on the card: most lines have moved 20-40 points in either direction. Nothing else moved like Judice. When that kind of money flows in at that kind of speed on a preliminary bout, the market is usually telling you something about the opponent’s condition — an unreported injury, a camp issue, something that has leaked into the betting ecosystem before it shows up in official communications. The fight is still on. But at -800, Judice is not a standalone bet. She belongs on a parlay, as the near-certain anchor, with the value built around her.

UFC Houston Parlay Picks

Place your UFC Houston bets at Bet99. For the full fight-by-fight breakdown, the Rousey-Carano debate in depth, and the complete parlay rationale, catch the full Ringside Report MMA episode — live on YouTube, Rumble, Twitch, DLive, and Kick every Thursday at 8 PM ET. And for the full background on the Gene LeBell lineage behind Rousey’s return, read our lead-up piece: Ronda Rousey Returns: How Gene LeBell’s Legacy Lives in the Rousey vs Carano Fight.

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