World-famous judoka Ronda Rousey said it herself: “I always said Gina [Carano] is the one person I would come back to fight for.” But did anyone truly ever expect it to happen at this stage, at the age of 39, and after nine years out of the cage? Well, it’s going to happen.

Jake Paul’s Most Valuable Promotions confirmed on February 17th that it was dipping its toes into the world of MMA, and it’s doing so with an absolute banger: Ronda Rousey vs Gina Carano, live on Netflix from the Intuit Dome on May 16th. It doesn’t get much bigger, despite the years of inactivity. 

 

Rowdy Ronda Returns

Sit with that for a second. Ronda Rousey, the woman who once bulldozed the UFC’s bantamweight division like a force of nature, who walked away from MMA before embarking on a WWE career, leaving both combat sports worlds with two daughters and an apparent peace with her past, didn’t quietly retire. She was waiting. Waiting for one specific name. And on February 17th, she finally got to say it out loud. And perhaps the biggest shocker is the fact that the UFC, the company that the Rowdy One helped push to new heights, is nowhere on the poster.

The clash won’t be your usual exhibition: Five rounds, five minutes each, the same as a UFC championship fight. A 145-pound catchweight. Four-ounce gloves. A hexagon cage instead of an octagon. Every one of those details is deliberate. The hexagon signals immediately that this is not a UFC event, this is something else entirely. A press conference is scheduled for March 5, back at the Intuit Dome, which means the promotional machine is only just beginning to warm up.

Carano’s response was measured, respectful, and quietly loaded: “Ronda approached me and said there’s only one person she would come back for.” The student asking the teacher for one final lesson. For fans who’ve followed women’s MMA since the Strikeforce days, that sentence alone could reduce them to tears. Rousey called it “the biggest superfight in women’s combat sport history.” She’s not wrong. And for the first time in a long time, the hype feels earned.

Online betting sites are already lapping it up, and why wouldn’t they? The latest MMA and UFC odds at Bovada currently price Rosey as a mighty -450 betting favorite, with Carano out at +300. But write the original trailblazer off at your peril.

Legacy

Here’s what people sometimes forget: Gina Carano didn’t just play a part in women’s MMA history. She practically invented the audience for it. She was the original trailblazer before Rousey took the ball and ran with it.

In 2009, when “Conviction” stepped into the Strikeforce cage against Cris Cyborg, it wasn’t just a fight — it was a legitimacy referendum on whether women’s combat sports could draw a crowd. It could. She proved it. And then she walked away, leaving a torch burning that a judo prodigy from Venice Beach, California would eventually pick up and carry into a global spotlight Carano herself never fully experienced.

That torch-passing dynamic is what makes this fight genuinely historically fascinating. Carano is the founder of a movement she never got to see flourish at its peak. Rousey is the beneficiary who turned that foundation into a dynasty — and then watched her own stock crumble in dramatic fashion. Both women will arrive in Tinseltown on May 16 carrying the weight of what could have been, what was, and what one final night inside a cage might still be.

The broader canvas only amplifies that weight. The last time Rousey fought professionally, Netflix was only just flourishing into the global dominator it now is. In 2026, the platform streams to 260-plus million members globally, and will be broadcasting her return to the cage live to every subscriber on the planet.

This is the first professional MMA event Netflix has ever broadcast, and the fact that they chose these two women as their introduction to the sport — not a current champion, not a title fight, but a legacy bout — says something profound about what Rousey and Carano represent beyond wins and losses. They are a crucial part of MMA history, and not just women’s. The sport is honoring that.

The Highs and Lows of a Storied Career

Nine years is a long time to carry an unfinished story.

Rousey’s MMA arc remains one of the most dizzying in combat sports history — not just because of how high she climbed, but because of how fast, how violently, and how publicly she fell. From 2012 to late 2015, she was untouchable. An Olympic judo bronze medalist who fought like she was personally offended by the concept of losing, she submitted opponent after opponent in times that made the crowd check whether they’d blinked.

Twelve wins. Eleven finishes. Her final four title defences all ended inside the first round in a total Octagon time of just 130 seconds—an average of 32.5 seconds per fight. That made her a genuine crossover superstar who appeared on magazine covers, late-night sofas, and action movies such as Furious 7 opposite Vin Diesel and Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson. The most famous fighter—not just female—on the planet.

Then Holly Holm landed a monstrous head kick as a +800 underdog at UFC 193 in Melbourne, and the ground shifted. That saw Rousey lose her UFC Bantamweight title after three long years. A year later, Amanda Nunes took her soul. The Brazilian dismantled Rousey inside 48 seconds at UFC 207, and it was clear that the biggest star in the game was no longer capable of competing with the finest female MMA stars in the world.

Suddenly, it was over. Not over like a setback. Over, like the closing of a chapter. Rousey went to the WWE, found a new audience, had two daughters — one born in 2021, one in 2025 — and by all appearances, built a life that didn’t require a cage. Until it did.

The Return

May 16th, Rousey returns, and she does so against the woman who made it all possible. Is this one last hurrah? Or is this the end of an era? The only certain thing is that we will all tune into Netflix and watch it.Â