Nakisa Bidarian has stood firm on his view that MVP’s latest Netflix pull would outstrip UFC Freedom 250, despite fans pushing back hard online.
The MVP co-founder first made the comparison on The Ariel Helwani Show, where he questioned whether UFC’s White House card could match Saturday night’s audience, peaking with 17 million viewers.
His argument was not about fight quality alone. Bidarian insisted that mainstream athlete identity remains the difference when major combat sports events chase casual viewers.
Nakisa Bidarian says MVP understands athlete IP better than critics
Bidarian told MMA journalist Ariel Helwani: “The question is, if you put the White House card on Netflix, does it do as well as what we did on Saturday night? I don’t believe it does.”
When challenged on X about that, he replied that putting “those same fighters from the June 14th card this past Saturday night would result in less viewership.”
He added that anyone who understood that point but still disagreed “don’t understand athlete IP”, which sharpened the backlash rather than ending it.
A user called “Anatomy of a Fighter” argued that Alex Pereira, Ilia Topuria, Justin Gaethje and Sean O’Malley on Netflix would be bigger because those fights would carry real title stakes.
Bidarian then stated: “That’s like saying if you put Canelo and Crawford on Netflix and have the UFC promote it then it will do bigger ratings than Jake Paul vs Mike Tyson promoted by MVP. Oh wait, they did do that and it wasn’t even close.
“Now before you tell me about Mike Tyson… put some of that same respect on Ronda Rousey’s name. All those fighters you named above combined don’t come close to her mainstream awareness score.”
Most fans appeared to reject Bidarian’s comparison, especially given the sporting relevance of UFC title fights. Still, he clearly believes MVP’s model understands modern viewership better than its critics.
