RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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See the full story · 1 sourcesRonda Rousey still has plenty of venom for UFC's Hunter Campbell.
Rousey, a UFC Hall of Famer who returned to MMA for a one-off blockbuster fight against Gina Carano on Netflix in May, has not held back her thoughts about the UFC's chief business officer. According to Rousey and Carano, the fight was initially proposed to take place under the UFC's banner, but the promotion passed on the idea because both women were past their prime as fighters.
Most Valuable Promotions decided to take the fight and brought it to Netflix. The card also featured former UFC heavyweight champion Francis Ngannou , and former UFC stars Nate Diaz and Mike Perry. The event peaked at 17 million viewers , which was a big feather in Rousey's cap.
"It was extremely validating, especially after Hunter Campbell told Gina that he didn't know how he was going to market a couple of 40-year-olds," Rousey told The Fight Culture. "That's what he said, and so it was really nice to kind of take that comment and throw into his face."
"It's not that he doesn't know how to market us, it's he doesn't know how to market f*cking anybody, and he missed a huge opportunity letting us go, because now, in his own arrogance, basically allowed us to create the Lamborghini to his Ferrari. He created the hugest rival that the UFC's ever going to have just because he's so arrogant, stupid, and chauvinist."
The event, also billed as MVP MMA 1, surpassed Rousey's expected viewership number. During fight week, she said that exceeding nine million viewers would be satisfactory, because that would beat the 8.8 million viewers for the first title bout between Junior dos Santos and Cain Velasquez on FOX in 2011.
MVP CEO Nakisa Bidarian and Rousey, who stated she wanted to be the Dana White of the promotion, teased the possibility of more MMA events in the future. As of now, there are no concrete plans for MVP MMA 2, but if and when it happens, Rousey hopes the event is given the same treatment as her return fight against Carano.
"We'll see. We need to kind of reconvene and see what the future looks like at this point," Rousey said. "I think everyone is just kind of like decompressing and getting back to post-that-huge-of-an-event fight life. What I hope they do in the future, whether with me or not, is that they continue to make their fights a huge event. Every single one, a huge event – because that's what's missing in MMA. It's just becoming on-every-weekend background noise, and it needs to be an event so anything that they do next, whether I'm involved or not, I hope that it's something huge."
This article originally appeared on MMA Junkie: Ronda Rousey validated by Netflix views, chirps UFC's Hunter Campbell
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