Jutta Leerdam turned up for Most Valuable Promotions’ first MMA event on Friday night, arriving at the Intuit Dome in Inglewood, California, with Jake Paul as the company moved beyond boxing and into a new fighting lane. The event, MVP MMA: Rousey vs. Carano, was streamed on Netflix and topped by a bantamweight bout between Ronda Rousey and Gina Carano.
Leerdam had already previewed the evening on Instagram, showing a blue outfit before switching into a light red look. She told followers, “Ik zie jullie vanavond op Netflix” and added, “MVP MMA fightnight.” Paul answered with film camera and heart emojis, then arrived with her hand in hand. MVP posted the caption, “Ze zijn gearriveerd.”
The appearance fit neatly with Paul’s push to give women’s fights a bigger place on the card and, he has said, to pay female fighters better than they are used to while giving them more publicity than ever. Leerdam, the Olympic speed skating champion on the 1000 meters, has become a regular presence at his events, but this one carried extra weight because it marked MVP’s first step into MMA.
That move matters because it changes what MVP is trying to be. For years the company has been tied to boxing, but Friday night showed a broader ambition: to build a combat-sports brand that can sell women’s bouts to a mainstream streaming audience. The setting at the Intuit Dome, the Netflix platform and the Rousey-Carano headliner all pointed to the same message — this was not a one-off experiment, but the start of a wider play.
Still, the image that will travel farthest is the one Leerdam helped create before the fights began: the blue dress, the switch to red, and her walk into the arena beside Paul. In a night designed to introduce a new product, they looked like part of the launch campaign itself.
