Ronda Rousey says she approached the UFC about staging her comeback fight against Gina Carano but ultimately reached an agreement elsewhere, with the former champion now set to return in a 145-pound bout airing live on Netflix.
Nearly a decade after her last MMA appearance, Rousey will face Carano at the Intuit Dome in Inglewood, California, in an event promoted by Most Valuable Promotions. The announcement prompted questions about why the former UFC women’s bantamweight champion and Hall of Famer is not competing under the UFC banner.
“I reached out to Dana [White] and asked if he would be interested in it,” Rousey said in an interview with ESPN. “It didn’t exactly work out with the UFC, but it led us to here today.”
UFC president Dana White had previously commented on Rousey’s return to training. “I think she’s just training again,” White said at the time. “She just had three babies and she’s in a whole other place in her life. But I will say this, she just had another baby and she’s in great shape right now. She’s freaking ripped like she used to be. I don’t know.”
Rousey said the only fight that made sense for her comeback was against Carano, a matchup the UFC had previously explored in 2014. “I was nine months pregnant, and I saw a video of Gina Carano giving an interview and she didn’t look good,” Rousey said. “She gained an unhealthy amount of weight and my first thought was ‘oh my god, what can I do to help?’ The reason why I had that thought was because she’s the one woman not only in MMA that doesn’t owe me a damn thing but that I owe immensely. I’m always trying to look out what I could do for her.
“When I was in a similar spot and depressed and gave up on the world and invertly gave up on myself, what I needed was a goal and something to reignite my passion again. I always said that Gina’s the one person that I would come back to fight for. I thought you know what, she needs this. She needs this fight. The more I thought about it, I was like I need this. I really need this fight.”
According to Rousey, discussions about the bout have been ongoing for more than a year. “This has been in the making since I was pregnant, which is over a year ago,” she said. “It took a long time to get us here. We fought for this. We fought to fight each other. There were a lot of obstacles along the way.
“I told her, if I have to go out there, and train you myself to fight me, I will. We made it happen. We had to work together to overcome every obstacle to get here. It’s really surreal because it’s been a secret for so long, I can’t believe I’m actually able to talk about it.”
Rousey, who stepped away from MMA in 2016 following consecutive knockout defeats and later cited concussion-related issues, said she is not overly concerned about returning after a prolonged absence. “I’ve been to two Olympics. Nothing compares to that kind of pressure,” she said. “To train your whole life for one day. Everything else just kind of pales in comparison.
“It’s so funny, people who have never fought they’re like ‘oh it must be such a big deal getting punched in the face.’ But when you’re actually fighting, it’s not like you have an opinion about it. It’s just an observation you have at the time. That’s not what’s scary. I feel like the pressure of the situation, the result is what really gives you anxiety, not the physical pain that could come out of it.”
