Netflix took a huge win with their first ever mixed martial arts event on Saturday, May 16, with a fight between Ronda Rousey and Gina Carano as the main event: a fight hyped for months, considered for decades as one of the biggest fights that never happened in MMA history... that lasted only 15 seconds.
Hype alone was enough to attract millions of viewers, many of whom maybe didn't even know the other co-main stars, Francis Ngannou, who beat, Philipe Lins, and Mike Perry, who defeated Nate Diaz. It has been reported that the fight (that took place very early of Sunday morning in European time) peaked at 17 million viewers globally on Netflix, shattering the previous record of nine million.
The previous higher viewership for a MMA fight was in 2011, in the UFC on Fox 1: Cain Velasquez vs. Junior Dos Santos, at 8.8 million viewers; while the record for most buys on pay-per-view is the UFC 329 in 2018, headlined by Khabib Nurmagomedov v Conor McGregor.