Matt Brown believes Ronda Rousey vs. Gina Carano will draw massive numbers on Netflix and leave the audience feeling like they wasted their time, and he has a blunt explanation for why.
Speaking on The Fighter vs. The Writer, Brown drew a direct comparison between the May 16 fight and the Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson boxing match, framing both as spectacles that generate interest without delivering the quality of competition that genuine fight fans want.
"It will do big numbers but who is actually going to care?" Brown said. "How many times are going to walk away from a fight and kind of feel icky and wish that we didn't watch it? I think we're going to feel the same thing with this fight. Feel like we wasted our time. Maybe not feel icky but we're going to feel like we wasted our time."
He also argued that fights like this one ultimately drive audiences toward the UFC rather than away from it. "People are going to become fight fans and they're like, 'I'm sick of this shit, can I just watch a real fight?' Oh yeah, we have a place that does that. It has all the best fights in the world."
Brown was equally direct about Rousey's ongoing attacks on the UFC and her comments about bantamweight champion Kayla Harrison, dismissing both as noise that nobody is taking seriously. "She seems like so angry about nothing sometimes. I don't think anyone's buying the schtick. Nobody believes that she's going to do anything with Kayla Harrison."
On Carano's motivations for returning after 17 years away from competition, Brown said the answer is straightforward. "She hasn't fought in 17 years. Clearly she was done fighting and had no intention to fight again and then she gets a call and they offer her enough money where she's like, 'OK, well, I'll do that.' It's hard to believe it's anything other than a paycheck."
He closed with a question about whether anything either fighter could do in the remaining weeks before the fight would generate genuine excitement for the actual bout.
"Even if they were at each other's throats and throwing chairs at the press conference, you'd still be like, 'you two aren't really going to give us that great of a fight.' There's nothing exciting about this."
Rousey vs. Carano headlines the Netflix card on May 16 at the Intuit Dome in Los Angeles.
