Mailbag: What does success (or failure) look like for Ronda Rousey, Gina Carano and MVP MMA on Netflix?

@shadore66: What's the "best" outcome of this mvp mma card this weekend? And conversely, what would be the "worst" outcome?

The best outcome includes a fun show with entertaining production values and a bunch of exciting fights with maybe just enough controversy and/or overall oddity to get people talking and sharing videos and looking forward to the next one. The worst outcome is bad fights, poor production and an event that drags on endlessly until we start looking around to see if Netflix still has old Seinfeld episodes.

I predict that what we’ll actually get is something in between those two extremes. Ronda Rousey should beat Gina Carano easily (unless she decides to carry her a little bit for the sake of show, which is the kind of thing fans might appreciate right up until they don’t). Perry will probably bludgeon Diaz until it makes us sad. Francis Ngannou will either score a devastating knockout or the kind of shocking upset loss that can only happen in heavyweight MMA.

Then we will wake up Sunday morning secure in the knowledge that the UFC is still by far the world’s foremost MMA organization, but at least now there’s someone out there willing to have a different kind of fun. You know, occasionally.

I think Sean meant all the gfer comments AND I believe he means it when he says he is sorry about it. So, is it cool to accept his apology while also knowing he will re-offend? Who wins in a fight? Ten pitbull-sized Pitbulls, or 1 Pitbull-sized pitbull?

— 🍁🍁Screenplaya🍁🍁 (@Screenplaya) May 14, 2026

@Screenplaya: I think Sean meant all the gfer comments AND I believe he means it when he says he is sorry about it. So, is it cool to accept his apology while also knowing he will re-offend? Who wins in a fight? Ten pitbull-sized Pitbulls, or 1 Pitbull-sized pitbull?

I think everyone can decide for themselves what they want to do with Sean Strickland’s apologies. Our collective experience with him is that he regularly says stuff before a fight that he seems a lot less committed to during and after the fight. (How many times has he promised a gladiatorial bloodbath only to then jab and front kick his way to a decision?) Then he turns right around and does it all again the next time.

The thing about saying a bunch of racist stuff to sell a fight is it tells us a) this stuff was in your head and within easy reach of your consciousness to begin with, and b) you thought it would play well with your audience. If Strickland thought there was a chance UFC fans would be so disgusted by those comments that they turned off the TV, he wouldn’t have risked it. He was betting that it would enrage some people and appeal to others. He was mostly right.

So what part is he apologizing for, exactly? If it was all just pre-fight hype that went too far, does that mean he believed some of it or none of it? Is it cool to be bigoted for the sake of some extra Paramount+ subscriptions (because, also, what are you “selling” now that PPV is dead, and what percentage are you getting, if any), as long as you’re not quite that bigoted?

I fully understand how five rounds of fighting might make you feel different toward your opponent. Fighting seems like the closest thing to therapy for Strickland (that and pouring out his soul on Instagram for some reason), so he might feel like he cleansed some part of his psyche by the end. But if you go on TV and tell us that you were just playing us for the sake of our attention, it doesn’t seem like a great long-term plan. Not if there’s going to be a next time. And we all know there will be.

Which country is the greatest pound-for-pound producer of high level MMA fighters and why is that country now Australia?

— Jietzsche (@Jietzsche) May 14, 2026

@Jietzsche: Which country is the greatest pound-for-pound producer of high level MMA fighters and why is that country now Australia?

I’m confused about what “pound-for-pound” means in this context. Is it like per capita? Or are we talking about the total combined weight of each country measured against how many high-level fighters they produce?

Either way, let me just remind you that Australia has around 28 million people. It also has Alexander Volkanovski and Jack Della Maddalena and a few other prominent names. But Georgia has like 3.6 million people and it produced Ilia Topuria and Merab Dvalishvili. And, as far as I know, there is no Georgian Tai Tuivasa.

https://x.com/ChrisKirk\_ASP/status/2054627954097844385?s=20

@ChrisKirk_ASP: Is it worse that we underestimate Strickland as much as we do, or that overestimate Chimaev as much as we do?

Remember Chimaev squeaked past Usman (prob should have been a draw) & all his fights past 1 round have been pretty close. Classic early frontrunner?

Look, I was out there saying that I thought guys like Robert Whittaker could give Chimaev trouble if they could make it past the first round. But he didn’t. He got his teeth rearranged before he got the chance. So it’s not like we didn’t know Chimaev was most dangerous early on. We knew. It’s just that no one had actually managed to turn that potential weakness into an actual victory.

We also never saw him fall so completely to pieces the way he did in that second round. That was a colossal drop-off, especially since all Strickland did in the first was simply not get choked. It’s not like Strickland even really made him work all that hard. Chimaev just flatlined out there, mostly on his own. I don’t know if it was the weight cut or the preparation or some combination, but that was about as big a difference between Round and Round 2 as we’ve ever seen from a UFC champ.

Why can’t Strickland fans just be happy their guy won?

— Jed Meshew II (@JedKMeshew) May 14, 2026

@JedKMeshew: Why can’t Strickland fans just be happy their guy won?

Jed, think about the type of people who are drawn to Strickland’s brand of frothing anger and joyless crankiness about a changing world. What could possibly make you think that they were in this for happiness?

Why don’t you guys at uncrowned cover Zuffa Boxing? There was en event over the weekend and it got zero coverage from you guys. Feels like you just don’t cover it because you don’t like Dana

— SasAttack (@NoahSas23) May 13, 2026

2NoahSas23: Why don’t you guys at uncrowned cover Zuffa Boxing? There was en event over the weekend and it got zero coverage from you guys. Feels like you just don’t cover it because you don’t like Dana

We’ve covered a lot of Zuffa Boxing. We’ve been all over the big news and the big fights. But last weekend Zuffa Boxing did a Sunday show at the Meta Apex that happened to be on the same weekend as UFC 328 and Daniel Dubois vs. Fabio Wardley. That meant our staff (and especially our editor-in-chief, Shaheen Al-Shatti) had been putting in some long hours already.

As for Dana White, did he even attend this event? Because I watched Shane Mosley Jr.’s fight afterward and I don’t recall seeing him there. If he can’t be bothered to show up, I don’t know how us doing the same is really so unfair.

We have seen in every other sport the concept of tracking and watching prospects become a bug thing for fans, why has that seemingly never caught on with MMA fans in your opinion?

LFA, CW, KSW, and more can be a lot to track but there is young talent there being ignored by fans.

— Andrew Harbaugh (@HarbaughAndrew) May 14, 2026

@HarbaughAndrew: We have seen in every other sport the concept of tracking and watching prospects become a bug thing for fans, why has that seemingly never caught on with MMA fans in your opinion?

LFA, CW, KSW, and more can be a lot to track but there is young talent there being ignored by fans.

You’re talking about a lot of fights to keep up with, across multiple streaming platforms and time zones. I also think some of it has to do with the way the UFC is structured right now. Because of the Contender Series, we see a lot of fighters show up in the UFC while still in the development phase of their careers. A lot of these events are like if MLB games let minor leaguers play the first three innings, so we do see a lot of prospects.

I think there’s also a sense that when an exciting prospect does pop up, we’ll all hear about him or her one way or another through stuff like a viral knockout posted on social media. We don’t necessarily all need to sit through an entire MMA event from Poland on a Saturday morning just waiting for a chance to glimpse the future — unless you want to.

fav ways to recreate in the 406? Summer being right around the corner, what are your fav attractions in the Last Best Place? You grow any beans?

— stringbean (@stringbeanbets) May 13, 2026

@stringbeanbets: fav ways to recreate in the 406? Summer being right around the corner, what are your fav attractions in the Last Best Place? You grow any beans?

Summer in Montana is short but glorious, with crisp mornings and long days (it stays light until 10 p.m. to make up for our short, bleak winter days). I have two kids who like to paddleboard and a dog who cannot be kept out of the water once the temperature rises, so we spend a lot of time on lakes and rivers. When it gets too hot even for that, find me cooling off with a domestic beer in the dark, climate-controlled basement of Double Front Chicken.