Ronda Rousey was the key figure behind bringing women into the
UFC. | Dave Mandel/Sherdog.com
While Ronda
Rousey essentially convinced Dana White to allow women to fight
in the Octagon more than a decade ago, she couldn’t persuade the
UFC CEO to book a fight between her and Gina Carano
in the world’s largest mixed martial arts promotion in the present
day.
On Tuesday, Most Valuable Promotions
announced that Rousey and Carano will square off in a
featherweight bout at the Intuit Dome in Los Angeles on May 16. The
five-round contest will air on Netflix. According to the Olympic
judoka, the bout has been in the works for quite some time.
“I was nine months pregnant, and I saw a video of Gina Carano
giving an interview and she didn’t look good,” Rousey told ESPN. “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.
“Her family owns Caesar’s Palace and Rebel Oil. There’s nothing I
could really do for her except for when I was in a similar spot,
when I was depressed and gave up on the world and inadvertently
gave up on myself. What I needed was a goal and something to
reignite my passion again. I always said that Gina is the one
person I’d come back to fight for. I thought, ‘She needs this. She
needs this fight.’ The more that I thought about it, I thought, ‘I
need this. I need this fight.’”
When Rousey was at the peak of her powers in the UFC in 2014, White
confirmed that there were discussions to bring Carano into the
Las Vegas-based promotion for a high-profile fight between the two
female stars. However, more than 10 years later, White and the UFC
apparently weren’t interested in revisiting that booking.
“I reached out to Dana and asked if he would be interested in it,”
Rousey said. “It didn’t exactly work out with the UFC, but it led
us to here today.”
According to Rousey, it took some time to make the fight against
Carano a reality.
“This has been in the making since I was pregnant, which is over a
year ago,” Rousey 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.”
Train Smarter, Not Harder
Rousey hasn’t fought since stepping away from the UFC following a
loss to Amanda
Nunes in 2016. The former bantamweight queen sparked rumors of
a comeback by posting a series of training videos in recent months
while stating that she was “finding my love” for MMA again. “Rowdy”
admits that the approach is different than when she was one of the
UFC’s biggest stars.
“Recovery is a lot more important. I may not have as much collagen
or cartilage as I had in the past,” Rousey said. “But I have more
knowledge than I ever have. I feel like it’s my technique and my
wittiness that always set me apart. It’s why whenever I get my
hands on somebody, they never get up again. I’ve never been better
in that way. We had to kind of change training around, instead of
doing multiple trainings a day, I just do one marathon training a
day, and I spend the rest of the day recovering. It’s really hard
warming up twice in a day when you’ve had as many athletic careers
as myself.”
As far as finding the right mindset to return to MMA, Rousey says
it isn’t that difficult thanks to an athletic background that has
been filled with high-pressure situations.
“I’ve been to two Olympics. Nothing compares to that kind of
pressure. To train your whole life for one day. Everything else
just kind of pales in comparison,” Rousey said.
“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.”