Ronda Rousey might not have expected her blunt take on UFC matchmaking to find common ground with one of her oldest rivals. But it did. As she gears up for her combat sports return on May 16 against Gina Carano on Netflix, Rousey has been open about why that comeback couldn’t happen under the UFC banner.

The short version: the numbers changed, the incentives changed, and the fights she wanted no longer lined up with what the promotion was willing to pay for. It’s a shift that sits right in the middle of the UFC’s new Paramount era, where pay-per-view points are gone. And surprisingly, Cris Cyborg nodded along.

“Now that they sold the company, it’s kind of out of Dana’s hands,” ‘Rowdy’ had shared in an interview on The Jim Rome Show. “Unfortunately, now it’s falling onto Hunter Campbell and UFC Corp, where they don’t care about putting on the best fights possible. They care about putting on the most cost-effective fights possible. It no longer made sense for me to go over there because they didn’t want to pay us the money that we deserve, because then for the rest of the time of the deal they’re gonna have to pay everybody else more.”

Cyborg, who has traded shots with Rousey for years, surprised people by backing the point openly on X.

“I had a similar experience after the Nunes fight when the UFC went to ESPN,” she wrote. “My team felt PPV was a dying revenue model and was negotiating on a higher guaranteed. Ultimately, we were told they weren’t going to adjust the revenue model which lead to me signing with Bellator.”

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The subtext is clear: this isn’t just Ronda Rousey being bitter about one negotiation. Cyborg says she saw the same wall and chose the same door out. The timing makes the conversation louder. The UFC’s 2026 schedule has drawn criticism for thin title stakes early in the year, with just one undisputed title fight across the first three numbered events.

UFC 326, headlined by the BMF belt, also caught heat for feeling more symbolic than stacked. The former champion’s claim that cost-cutting now shapes matchmaking feeds into that fan frustration. Are we watching the best possible fights, or the most efficient ones to book under a streaming model?

The UFC didn’t want to reset the market with a massive guarantee. Netflix and Most Valuable Promotions did. That’s how a fight that many assumed would be a UFC nostalgia headliner ended up elsewhere. What stands out is the messenger. Ronda Rousey and Cyborg agreeing on anything is rare. For Cyborg to publicly back Rousey here gives the critique weight. It suggests this isn’t just one star feeling underpaid.

Sean Strickland adds his voice to the UFC fighter pay controversy

Coming off Rousey and Cyborg landing on the same side of the pay argument, Sean Strickland basically said the quiet part out loud. Ahead of UFC Houston, the former middleweight champ looked at the UFC’s shiny new Paramount+ era and didn’t see a fresh start. He saw the same math, just wrapped in new branding. The promotion locked in a seven-year, $7.7 billion streaming deal and phased out pay-per-view points. The pitch to fans was simple: fighters will make more. Strickland’s response was just as simple. He doesn’t see it.

“No f— bonuses. No one’s getting paid f—ing more. No one’s getting paid more,” Strickland recently told Complex during an interview. “Yeah, it might give you like five, 10 G’s, dude. But like, what the f–?”

‘Tarzan’s point was that when you line the UFC up next to any other major sport, the pay gap jumps off the page. In his eyes, there’s not even a real debate about it; the split just isn’t fair, and the way the business is set up feels “predatory”. At the same time, he’s brutally honest about the job itself. Fighters choose to step in there, take damage, and trade years of their health for a paycheck.

And that’s the real test of this new era. If the biggest names keep finding better money elsewhere, the UFC’s leverage over the market shifts. If most fighters stay put because the platform still matters more than the paycheck, the model holds. Either way, this conversation isn’t going away.