{"id":552859,"date":"2026-03-20T13:19:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-20T13:19:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/552859\/"},"modified":"2026-03-20T13:19:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-20T13:19:08","slug":"carano-reveals-ufc-tried-to-bankroll-lawsuit-and-steal-her-from-strikeforce","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/552859\/","title":{"rendered":"Carano reveals UFC tried to bankroll lawsuit and steal her from Strikeforce"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ronda Rousey will go down in the history books for kicking open the door for WMMA in the UFC. She was the one that convinced the UFC to buy out rival promotion Strikeforce<\/a> to get at her contract and swap Rousey into their promotion, adding multiple women\u2019s divisions after UFC president Dana White said he\u2019d never have women<\/a> fighting there.<\/p>\n

But according to Gina Carano, \u201cConviction\u201d would have been first had she said yes to a questionably ethical and possibly illegal offer that White and former UFC owner Lorenzo Fertitta threw her way back in 2009.<\/p>\n

\u201cDana White and Lorenzo Fertitta, before the Cyborg fight but it had been announced, they had me come in to their old school office and sat me down,\u201d Carano said on the Jaxxon Podcast. \u201cAnd they\u2019re like, \u2018Look, we\u2019d love for you to come over to the UFC and we can get you out of your contract.\u2019 I think based on possible steroid use, maybe? And they were willing to fund the lawsuit against Strikeforce and everything to get me to go over there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Damn, that sounds like some tortious interference<\/a> right there. Could they have pulled it off? Who cares, so long as Carano\u2019s relationship with Strikeforce was ruined in the process and Strikeforce didn\u2019t get the massive Cyborg vs. Carano fight. Unfortunately for them, Carano wasn\u2019t willing to play ball.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fans were just so invested in me and Cyborg,\u201d she explained. \u201cAnd I was like, \u2018I gave my word. I gave my commitment.\u2019 It was my last fight on the Strikeforce contract. And I was like, \u2018Maybe let\u2019s talk after I fight Cyborg, but I\u2019m going in, I\u2019m not pulling out of this fight.\u2019 Yeah. So they did want me to come in.\u201d<\/p>\n

Carano would lose to Cyborg in a largely one sided affair. Instead of re-signing with Strikeforce or going to the UFC, Gina would move on to Hollywood<\/a> and attempt to kick off<\/a> an acting career. The UFC would put their plans on bringing a woman into the UFC on pause until 2012, when Ronda Rousey started made waves.<\/p>\n

Rather than attempt to bust Rousey out of her contract, the UFC instead bought Strikeforce out from under founder Scott Coker and absorbed all the top talent from the company into their roster. And the rest is history.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ronda Rousey will go down in the history books for kicking open the door for WMMA in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":552860,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,785,85,1396],"class_list":["post-552859","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-ufc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552859","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=552859"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552859\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/552860"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=552859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=552859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=552859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}