Tell you what, Jake Paul isn\u2019t one to let ex-fighters slip off into that good night, and nobody taps into \u201cold age raving at the close of day\u201d better.<\/p>\n
His Most Valuable Promotions surprised an MMA world<\/a> waiting on news of the UFC\u2019s White House card Tuesday by announcing a mega-fight between Ronda Rousey and Gina Carano<\/a>, which will take place May 16 in Los Angeles in the year 2026. If his intention was to make 2014 rage with envy, he of course came through with flying colors<\/a>. This is a booking that comes a full decade beyond the time when it would\u2019ve been considered, without hyperbole, the biggest women\u2019s fight in MMA history.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n Still, even if you heard that news and typed out the only three appropriate letters to meet the occasion \u2014 WTF? \u2014 to see those two names together somehow carries a magnitude that defies even the passage of time. In a single fight, which is scheduled for five rounds, the lineage of women\u2019s MMA will try to do harm to one another live on Netflix. This is Typhon vs. Zeus for women\u2019s MMA. If there had been no Gina Carano in the aughts, there wouldn\u2019t have been a Ronda Rousey in the teens. If there was no Ronda Rousey in the teens, there might still not be women in the UFC today.<\/p>\n That one baton pass gave a thousand women their livelihoods. They are the authors of an era, of an avenue for possibility, and they steered a sport with so many happy machismos and misogynies into a place that other sports have failed to reach. Which is to say, they not only leveled the playing field, but they seamlessly showed the blockbuster potential of women\u2019s fighting. Rousey\u2019s reign was transcendent in a way that can only be rivaled by Conor McGregor, and together that tandem drove up the $4.2 billion asking price in 2016 when Zuffa sold to WME-IMG.<\/p>\n Significance of that kind sells itself, and a Rousey-Carano fight \u2014 even so many years past its expiry \u2014 will do big business. MVP will hammer home every legacy angle possible, to give as much dream to the \u201cdream fight\u201d as they can about the Pioneer and the Trojan Horse who opened up and ultimately changed the sport of MMA. Yet, as we well know, s\u00e9ance bookings of this kind, where fighters are dredged up from the past, can so easily become sad affairs.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n Which brings back us back to the broader question of … WTF?<\/p>\n It\u2019s kind of funny, at least through a lens of gamesmanship, that this fight should fall under Jake Paul\u2019s MVP banner rather than the UFC\u2019s. If the UFC hadn\u2019t blown Rousey up as it did beginning in 2013, there\u2019d be no MVP jumping in to cash in on the residuals in 2026. And make no mistake, \u201926 is an apt year to hold the event, as Carano and Rousey haven\u2019t competed in a cage for 26 years cumulative years.<\/p>\n Twenty-six years.<\/p>\n If we were a nation easily spooked by red flags, this might be a dealbreaker. Fortunately that ain\u2019t us, and MVP flies red flags just as high and proud as the American sky will hold. There\u2019s a good chance that Rousey-Carano wouldn\u2019t seem as anachronistic if Paul hadn\u2019t brushed off the relic of 57-year-old Mike Tyson in late 2024 for a record-breaking boxing match on Netflix. Once you slug it out with a proud member of AARP for viewing pleasure \u2014 108 million live global viewers \u2014 the lines of decency begin to blur.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n This one is tame by comparison.<\/p>\n Still, Carano last fought in the summer of 2009, which was a mega-fight for the times against the overlapping Strikeforce champion Cris Cyborg. As expected, she was walloped in that fight. In part because she was undersized for the matchup, and in part because \u2026 well, let\u2019s just say that Carano in her prime would very likely find herself an underdog against many bantamweights on the UFC\u2019s active roster right now. She didn\u2019t really stand a chance against Cyborg.<\/p>\n It should also be mentioned that Carano had a grand total of eight professional MMA bouts, not counting the ones that occurred against the Klatoonian Raiders on “The Mandalorian.” The great thing about early pioneers \u2014 especially those who can double as Hollywood stars who can appear elegantly on the red carpet and tastefully topless on the cover of “ESPN the Magazine” \u2014 is that they don\u2019t need to be the best. They merely need to be first.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n From her perspective, MMA was a chapter of her life. She\u2019s not coming back to see if the old blunderbuss still fires straight, she\u2019s coming back for the many zeroes that didn\u2019t appear on those earlier checks.<\/p>\n Rousey last fought in December of 2016, and even the come-latelies might remember how that went against Amanda Nunes at UFC 207. She was knocked out in 48 seconds. That fight is all-the-more memorable for her coach Edmond Tarverdyan screaming out \u201chead movement!\u201d in the same tragic tone as Herbert Morrison cried \u201cOh, the humanity\u201d at the Hinderberg disaster.<\/p>\n It was her second straight loss, and she disappeared from the Octagon for good.<\/p>\n Or at least, from unchoreographed competition until now.<\/p>\n