Ronda Rousey started 2025 expecting to fight Gina Carano under the UFC banner. She finished it with a date and deal falling through, instead shifting her comeback to Jake Paul’s Most Valuable Promotions banner and streaming giant Netflix.
At a kick-off press conference in Los Angeles on Tuesday, both fighters were on hand to explain how the fight, set for the Intuit Dome in L.A. in May, came together.
Gina Carano, for one, confirmed that Rousey had reached out about the fight, initiating the process after seeing the fighter-turned-actor struggling. The overture came via UFC CEO and President Dana White, she revealed.
“Dana gave me a call, he said ‘Ronda’s pregnant,’ I think she was nine months pregnant,” Carano recalled, “and ‘she wants to fight, and the only one she wants to fight is you.'”
“At that time, I was extremely sick in my body, had a couple of tough, rough years like I think a lot of us did have. And at that time I was like ‘you know what? Absolutely.’ It just became more and more real as 2025 went on. It’s pretty incredible and surreal to be here today.”
“It’s healing, it’s exciting, it’s everything I could have hoped for. I didn’t know I needed this so bad,” Carano finished. While she might be best known these days for her work on Disney’s The Mandalorian, Carano was a women’s fighting pioneer, though she has not competed since a loss to Cris Cyborg in 2009.
Even when Rousey left pro wrestling’s WWE, fighting professionally again was not the plan for the former UFC women’s bantamweight champion and Hall of Fame member. She’d retired from the UFC in 2016.
“I never thought I would come back. It didn’t cross my mind at all. I think it kind of started with my now coach Ricky [Lundell], who was originally my mortal enemy – he was coaching against me on The Ultimate Fighter – he was also coaching my husband Travis Browne, he convinced me to give him a chance and we became friends over the years. He asked me to help him get his black belt in judo,” stated Rousey.
“I had put a lot of walls around me when it came to martial arts and everything like that. I was forced to retire over some neurological issues that I didn’t really have any clarity about. It hurt to be around it.”
Rousey accepted the coaching role, however, which in turn “made me fall in love with marital arts again. It reminded me of the joy that it gave me from the very beginning, and why I love it so much. I really am a master of it, and I understand it so deeply, and to be able to teach it to someone that would understand it on that level, it reminded me why I loved it again.”
Rousey was soon three months pregnant, doing suplexes in her own garage. Months later, she decided to reach out to Carano. “It’s been such a journey to get here, so many obstacles, and so many people have tried to get in between us and insert their own agenda. We went from barely knowing each other and respecting each other to going ‘you know what? We’re going to fight to fight each other. I told her ‘I will train you to fight me if I have to.’ Luckily I didn’t have to do that.”
Rousey then touched on what the fight has become since it was announced. Alongside the UFC’s Freedom 250 announcement, MVP’s first foray into MMA has become about challenging the behemoth that is the UFC.
“I thought it was just about me and finding my love for the sport, and just about her [Carano] getting back to finding that fire and that light in her eyes that we all fell in love with. But it’s become much more than that,” admitted Rousey. “Now it’s become about changing the entire landscape of the sport, and challenging the monolith that the UFC has become.”
“Of course, I just wanted to do something fun and I ended up having to change the world.”
Originally, the fight was going to come under the UFC banner. That was Ronda Rousey’s first choice. “I have such love and respect for Dana that I wanted to bring this to him first,” she said on Tuesday, telling him “I would rather fight for you than fight for me, just make it make sense for me.”
To his credit, White did. An offer was tended, Rousey accepted. The deal was originally going to be the final fight under the UFC’s PPV model, in December 2025, before UFC broadcasts shifted to Paramount+. “It was the best PPV structure ever, and I was so grateful.” Then Carano announced she needed more time to get into fight shape. “I think that was fate, it was meant to be, it was meant to push us to the other side. Once they moved into the streaming model, it’s just not about putting on the best fights anymore. Dana is legally beholden to the shareholders, to maximize shareholder value.”
“Unfortunately now that they’ve taken the reigns of the company away from him, it’s barely recognizable now. And they needed to be saved from themselves. Luckily, I’m here to be their hero.”
MVP isn’t skipping on the May 16 Netflix card, having signed Francis Ngannou, MMA’s lineal heavyweight champion, as a co-headliner. He takes on former PFL heavyweight champ Philipe Lins.
