Joe Rogan has been with the UFC for a very long time now, but that hasn’t stopped him from acknowledging that Ronda Rousey has made some valid points in her outspoken criticism of the company in recent weeks.
Rousey has been taking pot shots at the promotion that made her a superstar ever since she announced her big comeback fight against Gina Carano, which will air on Netflix in May and is promoted by Jake Paul’s MVP outfit.
Along the way she’s claimed that the UFC no longer looks to put on the biggest fights, and instead is just attempting to put on the most cost-effective bouts they can to please their shareholders.
She’s also taken aim at the fact that UFC fighters are still grossly underpaid, has stated that their flagship ‘UFC: White House’ fight card ‘sucks’, and even just earlier this week declared that she’s coming after UFC Chief Business Officer Hunter Campbell’s job.
Rogan has been watching the situation unfold with keen interest, and admits that some of her talking points actually have a lot of truth to them.
“Ronda Rousey, she’s promoting the Netflix fight,” Rogan said during a conversation with Dustin Poirier on his podcast. “She had this big, long speech about the UFC selling for $7 billion [and] these fighters aren’t making enough money. And you know, look, she made some good points, and the most important thing is that she gets the conversation out there and it puts pressure on the UFC to pay people more.”
On top of that, Rogan believes that Rousey has the power and unparalleled reach of Netflix behind her could be a potential gamechanger for the sport.
“If Netflix can become successful at MMA, if they can become successful putting cards together and pulling fighters away. Like, right now they’re doing a one-off, right? It’s a one-off and it’s kind of a gimmicky thing… It’s gonna be crazy,” Rogan said.
“But, if anybody’s got that kind of money, it’s Netflix. They throw around a lot of ridiculous money. They make so much money. So they can kind of do that. The question is: Are they going to do that more than once?”
“So if they do that more than once, then what happens is it’s all about the name of the fighters, just like boxing. [In] boxing, no one cares if it’s Golden Boy or Bob Arum. Nobody cares about that. What they care about is who’s fighting who… So, if Netflix can kind of do the boxing thing on Netflix with big-name stars, they could be a major player, and that will elevate everybody’s pay scale. There’s a lot of people like, ‘Oh, Ronda, how could she turn her back on the UFC and talk sh*t like that?’ If what she’s saying doesn’t make any sense, she can’t say it, right? So, if what she’s saying makes sense, then you have to go; she’s got a point. Yeah. She’s got a point. She’s got a point.
“They sold it for seven billion dollars, or whatever it is. They got this seven-billion-dollar deal, whatever the f***ing deal was with Paramount. Not even selling it, sold rights to it. That makes sense. She’s making sense. So if she’s saying this and Netflix listens, and if someone comes along and they’re a shrewd businessman, they go, ‘Look, there’s a lot of people, their contracts are coming up, and when these people’s contracts are coming up, let’s get into negotiations.’ Then all of a sudden, some people start drifting over.
“If you get like an Islam Makhachev who starts leaving and they leave and go fight in Netflix, and then they can talk four or five top major contenders into doing [it]… You’re gonna need something like Netflix, and Netflix can kind of pull it off because Netflix has a massive promotional machine, but they need big names.”
The UFC has faced potential threats in the past when promotions like Strikeforce, Affliction, Elite XC and Bellator tried to compete by signing up high-profile fighters and putting on star-studded events.
However, the UFC’s global reach, brand awareness and strong pay-per-view presence proved to be too tough a nut to crack, leading to all of those promotions folding in the end.
This time it’s different though.
By giving up on the pay-per-view model and moving to streaming with Paramount+ they are no longer the biggest fish in the pond in terms of reach, with Netflix having a far bigger customer base, as well as deeper pockets financially.
With that in mind it’ll be interesting to see how the UFC responds to this new threat to their market dominance, and whether in the long run it will lead to improved pay for fighters and better quality cards for fans to enjoy.
