The next chapter of the company’s journey investing in combat sports arrives Saturday when they jump into the cage to stage an MMA event headlined by female icons Ronda Rousey and Gina Carano at Intuit Dome in Inglewood, California.

The show will also feature former UFC heavyweight champion Francis Ngannou and forever fan favorite Nate Diaz, household names who are no strangers to boxing.

The main card will broadcast globally on Netflix, the streaming powerhouse that has taken a serious liking to presenting pugilism for its 325 million subscribers ever since first stepping into the space with Paul’s showdown against Mike Tyson in November 2024.

Nakisa Bidarian, the co-founder and CEO of MVP, is the businessman brokering deals behind the scenes while Paul masterfully mans a megaphone, shining a light on their series of calculated risks.

Bidarian’s respect for the power of women's combat sports is rooted in Rousey, who took the UFC by storm as its first women’s champion at a time when he served as a chief strategy and financial officer for UFC.

“We're incredibly excited to put on this massive, global event headlined by two athletes in Ronda and Gina, who just happen to be women. It's capturing not just a sports audience but a mainstream audience as well,” Bidarian told The Ring after Rousey, Carano and others from the 11-fight card took over the iconic Venice Beach Boardwalk for a public workout.

“Ronda became the UFC’s biggest star and was right up there with Conor McGregor in 2015. I’d never seen anything like it. It’s very uncommon for any industry, but most notably for a woman in the professional sports ranks, to be the biggest star. When we started MVP, Ronda’s success in MMA was definitely a large component of us trying to make women’s boxing sustainable moving forward.”

Women’s boxing has been devoid of a perennial draw and lightning rod akin to Rousey, but it's certainly grown out of its stereotypes of being a novelty act since the turn of the century.

Bidarian and Paul made their first splash five years ago by signing Amanda Serrano, one of the greatest female fighters of all time. They immediately gave her a co-starring role alongside Paul, beginning with the company’s debut event featuring his first fight against Tyron Woodley on Showtime PPV in August 2021.

MVP slowly navigated around boxing, with Paul mostly steering the ship with his own fights headlining events. Separately, a series of contenders including Lucas Bahdi started to emerge and starred on MVP shows.

But since the beginning of last year, MVP has signed seemingly every significant female fighter under the sun, including Alycia Baumgardner, Mikaela Mayer, Caroline Dubois, Chantelle Cameron, Holly Holm, Ellie Scotney, Dina Thorslund, Cherneka Johnson, Yokasta Valle, Savannah Marshall, Shadasia Green, Oshae Jones, Tiara Brown and Evelin Bermudez, among dozens of others.

MVP has six of The Ring’s top 10 pound-for-pound fighters under contract. Although Katie Taylor, Claressa Shields, Gabriela Fundora and Lauren Price are navigating their careers outside of MVP, all roads for meaningful matchups seemingly lead them back to Bidarian and Paul.

“People have been doubting our strategy ever since the beginning,” said Bidarian. “We tested our theory with Amanda Serrano by leveraging Jake’s profile to put her on the pedestal and provided her a platform and push to allow the world to appreciate her talent and women’s boxing as a sport.

“We’ve been getting traction, just like we thought we would, ever since, and it all culminated around the time Jake Paul faced Mike Tyson. That’s when we pulled the trigger to go all-in with a strategic priority and signed all of the best women's champions that we could, in addition to top female contenders and prospects.”

Broadcasters took notice that there was a viable market for women’s boxing — albeit one that required much fewer financial resources — after punting on boxing as a whole.

Serrano and Taylor engaged in an all-out war in a rematch as the co-main event under Paul-Tyson that yielded 60 million worldwide live views on Netflix. The Serrano-Taylor trilogy in July was also presented on Netflix and resulted in six million views as the main event of an all-women’s card.

With a deep roster in tow, MVP signed a multi-year media rights deal with ESPN to feature MVPW shows on ESPN’s linear cable channel and ESPN+ streaming service, eight months after the media giant allowed its deal with Top Rank to expire. Also in March, Sky Sports became the UK home for MVPW, which has already staged two shows featuring wins by Dubois and Baumgardner across continents.

MVPW’s third event is scheduled for May 30 in El Paso, Texas, headlined by a rematch between Holm and Stephanie Han, and Serrano as the co-main event. MVP-04 is set to take place in Orlando on June 13, and Bidarian said several more shows will be slotted for the second half of the year.

“We’re really excited to have a cohesive brand and reference for the sport in MVPW, which represents the best in women’s boxing,” he said. “There is positive momentum right now around women's sports, starting with the WNBA, and that is spreading across the entire ecosystem. We’re not fools to say MVPW is going to be as big as men’s boxing, but it’s OK. You see how leagues like the WNBA are starting to do well. There is a lot of asset value there.

“When you believe in creating a premium product featuring a vast majority of the world's best athletes, there will be media rights demand for it, consumers will continue to understand its power, fanship and viewership will continue to grow.

“People are paying attention to women's sports more than ever. If you can give media companies the guarantee that they are getting the best of the best fights consistently, and it’s not insanely expensive compared to that on the men's side, it becomes a great one-two punch for everybody.”

MVP is still very much in the business of promoting men’s boxing on the undercard of Paul’s fights and on the prelim portions of the MVPW shows. Bidarian said MVP is also in discussions for additional media rights deals for event configurations headlined by men’s boxing.

Despite Paul saying his fighting future is in jeopardy after breaking his jaw in two places following a knockout loss to Anthony Joshua in December, an injury that resulted in two surgeries, Bidarian said the expectation is for the YouTuber-turned-fighter to return to the ring late in Q4 against either Ngannou, a Tommy Fury rematch or a run at a high-level cruiserweight.

“Given Jake’s profile, reach, and the demand for his product, we can do what makes sense on a case-by-case basis,” said Bidarian.

In the meantime, Rousey, 39, and Carano, 44, who are returning from a combined 27-year retirement, are tasked with guiding MVP’s maiden voyage into MMA.

"It's getting to a point where it's not a novelty to have women headlining events. It’s becoming commonplace," Rousey said during a press conference. "Hopefully, it's so common that it doesn't even deserve a mention. The ultimate goal is for women to have the same viewership and bring in the same revenue as men and to be able to be compensated the same as them as well."

Bidarian entirely supports Rousey's viewpoints and hopes its challenger brand can break through in a new sport and become something bigger, much like their business moves have proven to be in boxing.

“I assume our MMA event will do great numbers and that we’ll be taking a much more systematic approach on how we approach the sport,” said Bidarian. “Ronda's blown me away with her professional and promotional capabilities. She told me she has the desire to be our Dana White after this fight, and if all things go well, I am very open to launching MVP MMA with Ronda being an integral part of it.

“We can push, promote and raise awareness, but it also comes to the athletes to put on the right performances and capture the imagination of fans so that MVP can tell those stories and help everyone expand even further.”