Most Valuable Promotions (MVP), the combat sports promotion co-founded by Jake Paul and Nakisa Bidarian, is fresh off its debut effort, the “Rousey vs. Carano” fight card last weekend on Netflix. The event was considered a substantial (but not gigantic) hit and Paul is already mapping out his second effort.
“It’s back to the drawing board for us, but we’re ready to keep on going,” Paul said at the MVP MMA 1 post-fight press conference (via ESPN). “We love doing this, and don’t want to do anything
that’s mid like the UFC has been doing. We’re always going to hold ourselves to a higher standard, and because of that, there might be fewer events, but we’re going to do as many as we can. A lot of things were set up for us tonight. I stand here ready to go to war with the UFC using my followers and promotional ability. [UFC] knows it can’t touch me.”
A second card requires a second batch of available fighters.
“I’m excited about the amount of outreach we’ve had inbound to us from current fighters, former fighters, future fighters and fighters with other promotions that shouldn’t be calling us,” Bidarian added. “If we can provide an alternative that’s fighter-first, that’s equitable, that has a great partner in distribution, why would fighters not want to work with us? We’re not going to be piggish in our desire to have insane profit margins. We don’t want to be in the business of losing money, but we don’t need to make crazy amounts of money to create asset value. We want to be fair to the fighters and pay them what we believe they are worth, which is more than other promotions.”
Could former UFC welterweight title challenger Colby Covington be first to sign for MVP MMA 2?
BetOnline.ag has “Chaos” as the leader at 2/1 odds, followed by Brad Tavares (3/1), Tai Tuivasa (4/1), Josh Culibao (5/1), and Tony Ferguson (6/1), just to name a few. While Covington is now retired from UFC, it doesn’t necessarily mean he’s released from his UFC contract, which are notoriously ironclad in their language.
Until that gets sorted out, you can still watch Covington compete here.
