Most Valuable Promotions is stepping into the MMA promotional cage this weekend for a big event on Netflix, and a successful show can not only be good for the fighters, but good for the sport — which is something MVP co-founder Nakisa Bidarian is hoping for.
Saturday’s first MVP MMA card takes place at Intuit Dome in Inglewood, Calif., and is headlined by Ronda Rousey vs. Gina Carano, and also features two big bouts between Nate Diaz and Mike Perry, and Francis Ngannou vs. Philipe Lins.
While some are intrigued, Bidarian can’t help but notice a lot of folks online, not only trashing the card, but hoping for it to fail, and he’s quite puzzled by that.
“It’s mind boggling why people want this event to fail or talk down on it, because it’s only good for the sport, it’s only good for the athletes,” Bidairan told MMA Fighting. “And just like [Jake] Paul-[Mike] Tyson was the most viewed boxing event since the days of Muhammad Ali, that only created more opportunities, that only created more awareness, that resulted in an all-women’s event on Netflix.
“I don’t disrespect the media. Dana White loves to call media different names, but there’s so many online Twitter media guys that are fanboys of Dana or the UFC that try to talk down on this card. And it’s funny to me. It’s comical that they don’t see the bigger picture, and that bigger picture is we’re putting on a massive event that’s going to touch much more than hardcore MMA fans, that’s going to bring more eyeballs to these athletes, that’s going to create more opportunities for MMA overall outside of one distributor in the U.S. which is Paramount.”
The UFC is the top promotion in all of combat sports, which is something Bidarian — who used to be an employee of the company before co-founding MVP with Jake Paul — believes to be true.
The UFC has put on some big events in 2026, but the fanbase has also been dissatisfied by the lack of star power on a lot of the cards thus far this year. Bidarian believes that MVP is not here with this first event to overtake the UFC, but the promotion wants to add an alternative to the mixed martial arts world.
“What we want to to that’s different than the UFC is be truly fighter first and everything that we touch, everything that we produce has them at the forefront,” Bidarian explained. “We want to be authentic, we want to be genuine, we want to put the vast majority of the money back in the athletes’ pockets.
“I have always said, and I will always say the UFC is the best promotional entity in combat sports, boxing or MMA, and that’s not going to change. We just want to be an alternative path, and look at us 4.5 years in versus where others were 4.5 years in and think about us 20 years from now. That’s what we’re doing.”
The MVP-Netflix relationship has put on some big fights that accumulated impressive viewership, including Paul vs. Tyson and Paul vs. Anthony Joshua. But this is the first time an MMA event has taken place on the Netflix platform.
Bidarian has a very important litmus-test-like question in mind when it comes to Netflix, and how big the sport of mixed martial arts actually is.
“What does big MMA do?,” Bidairan said. “You can say what you want about this card, but there’s never been star power of this level assembled on one single MMA card in history, with still the best heavyweight, active heavyweight in the world in Francis Ngannou, right? So, it’s not just legends that are icons, you’re also getting great current champions of other organizations like Salahdine Parnasse, right? You have a great prospect in Namo Fazil who’s going to like put on a spectacular show.
“So top to bottom, we’re offering you an unbelievable card, and I just want to see what that means for MMA on Netflix.”
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