Ronda Rousey says her May 16 return to the cage against Gina Carano is the end of the road. The former UFC and Strikeforce champion said Wednesday that if everything goes according to plan, the fight will be her one and only comeback.
“I promised my husband that I’m completely done, and we want to have more kids, and I really just can’t take any more detours,” Rousey said. She said the only thing that could change that is if she and Carano produce a fight that demands a trilogy, though she added that she cannot take any more detours.
The bout will headline Most Valuable Promotions’ first move into MMA and stream on Netflix from Intuit Dome in Inglewood, California. For Rousey, 39, it is a return nearly 9.5 years after she last competed. Carano, 43, has not fought in almost 17 years.
Rousey’s place in the sport was built on a run that is still hard to match. From 2012 to 2015, she won eight consecutive championship fights across Strikeforce and the UFC, finishing six title fights in 70 seconds or less and one in 14 seconds before back-to-back losses to Holly Holm and Amanda Nunes ended the streak.
She never called the break that followed a retirement, even after the loss to Nunes in 2016. But the path back started earlier than most people knew. Rousey said that about 15 months ago, when she was nine months pregnant with her second daughter, she reached out to UFC chief Dana White about a fight with Carano. She said the UFC balked at the money she thought she deserved, and the bout eventually moved to Most Valuable Promotions.
Rousey said she had not felt any internal pull to fight again until recently. Her coach, Ricky Lundell, asked her to help him get his black belt in judo, and she said that while she was dealing with neurological issues, talking through her martial arts philosophy with someone who understood it at the highest level brought the joy back. “I didn’t feel it at all,” she said of any urge to return. “Not one little bit.” Then the old fire came back, just long enough to get her to one more walk to the cage.
The undercard adds more familiar names, with Francis Ngannou and Nate Diaz in separate bouts. But the event still turns on the same question Rousey has already answered for herself: she says this is not a restart. It is the last stop.
