MVP’s Nakisa Bidarian reacts to Dana White ‘fanboys’ talking down Rousey vs. Carano fight card

NEW YORK, NY - APRIL 15: Nate Diaz and Mike Perry attend Rousey vs. Carano NYC Press Conference at The Palladium on April 15, 2026 in New York, New York. (Photo by Sarah Stier/Getty Images for Netflix) | Getty Images for Netflix

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.