Gina Carano will return to the cage for the first time since 2009 when she faces Ronda Rousey on Netflix this May.
The fight, promoted by Jake Paul’s MVP, took many by surprise, despite rumors of it dating back over a year. Initially, it had been lined up for the UFC, until they jumped to Paramount+. Then, PPV dollars were gone, and the promotion didn’t want to give guaranteed money to a couple of stars of yesteryear.
During Tuesday’s Rousey vs. Carano press conference, both headliners spoke with Cageside Press about the respect shared between them. For Rousey, it’s as simple as the fact that without Carano, she wouldn’t have known what MMA was.
“I would not have known that women’s MMA existed if it wasn’t for her. I was training for the 08 Olympics when I saw her fight Julie Kedzie, and saw the awe and admiration and respect that she commanded from everybody in the room. She stole the show,” recalled Rousey. “And I was so envious of her. I saw her fight and I was like ‘I can totally kick her ass,’ but I was also so in awe and enthralled with her. She planted that seed in my mind, when I was training for the Olympics, I would try to listen to music and think about ‘ooh I’m going to win the Olympics,’ and my Olympic matches and all of this and doing Judo, and it just kept creeping into my mind.”
“I would think of winning MMA, and winning MMA matches. She planted that seed. My mom has a saying, that you can’t unthink a thought. It’s because of her. She changed my whole life, and she already was changing the world of sports and went and moved on to bigger and better things for herself, and I was able to change the world because of her.”
Carano, meanwhile, referenced a years-old interview she had given, in which she predicted the girls she was inspiring in her heyday would in turn inspire her.
“The women that I’m inspiring now are going to re-inspire me later, and I didn’t know how prophetic those words would be. And it has come full circle to exactly that,” stated Carano, who had an undefeated career until the ran into Cris Cyborg in what turned out to be Carano’s final fight. “Ronda— they’ve tried to get me to come out of retirement. There’s nobody I would have come out for except for her. And, when we were having kind of a tough time getting it done, because I have walked away before, Ronda got on the phone with me and she’s like ‘okay, let’s sit down and talk about it.'”
“I call her little wolf, because she’s wagging her tail and she’s charming, but at the same time, she wants to rip my arm off and shove it up my ass,” Carano later added with a laugh, realizing just a moment too late that those would no doubt be the words that would go viral.
“She’s completely inspired me. I didn’t realize how badly I needed it. I don’t care about the time off. I’ve had a lot of extreme things happen. I used to get really for stuff like this, and I feel freakin’ great right now,” Carano continued. “It’s got good energy for this fight, and I agree with Ronda, this is the biggest fight going on right now. And it’s a complete honor.”
Ronda Rousey faces Gina Carano under the MVP banner on Netflix on May 16, 2026 in Los Angeles, CA at the Intuit Dome.
