In less than four years, Ronda Rousey helped propel the UFC and women’s mixed martial arts to unforeseen successes. The 2008 Olympic bronze medalist, armed with her judo, swagger, charisma and a knack for first-round finishes, became the first woman signed by the UFC as well as its first female champion in 2013.
All this came not long after UFC boss Dana White vowed to never have women fighting in his organization. But Rousey’s star quality was off the charts. Her career, as well as the UFC’s profile, skyrocketed into a new galaxy.
In less than four years, the bantamweight phenom was gone, on the heels of her second loss, to fellow great Amanda Nunes in late 2016.
Nearly 10 years later, she is back. This time, the Riverside resident and Santa Monica High alum says it’s one and done as she squares off against MMA pioneer Gina Carano in a featherweight main event for the Most Valuable Promotion on Saturday at Intuit Dome.
Married to former UFC heavyweight Travis Browne and a mother of two, Rousey, 39, said this fight came to fruition when she was nine months pregnant with her second daughter, who was born in January 2025. Rousey has long credited Carano for helping put women’s MMA on the map in 2009, when Carano fought Cris Cyborg in a Strikeforce main event that aired on Showtime. And Rousey says Carano would be the only comeback she would consider as a sort of win-win for the two of them.
When Rousey shopped the fight to the UFC, she says the brass was less than enthused and didn’t meet her financial expectations. After UFC boss Dana White, with whom Rousey still maintains a close friendship, gave her the green light to pursue other avenues, Rousey linked up with Jake Paul and Nakisa Bidarian’s Most Valuable Promotions, which has risen to prominence featuring boxing and is now dipping its toes into its first MMA foray.
While Rousey hasn’t fought since 2016, and the 46-year-old Carano even longer after that TKO loss to Cyborg 17 years ago, expectations are high for big numbers on Netflix. The card also features former UFC stars Nate Diaz and Mike Perry in the co-main event and former UFC champion Francis Ngannou versus former PFL heavyweight tournament winner Philipe Lins.
SEE: Photos: MMA icon Ronda Rousey trains for final fight versus Gina Carano
Rousey, who has not been shy about criticizing the premier MMA promotion she used to call home, sees Saturday’s venture as an opportunity to shake up the combat sports landscape and direct a spotlight on fighter advocacy.
“It’s us against the world. It’s us united against the industry, against the juggernaut that you know the UFC has become,” Rousey said in an exclusive interview. “It’s us standing up together and saying, ‘No, you’re not going to divide and conquer us. We’re going to come together, put together the best fight card that anyone’s ever seen, and remind everybody that we’re who people come to see, not any (freaking) brand.”
Here are the highlights from an interview, edited for length and clarity, last week with Rousey:
Q: Can you explain this journey with Ricky Lundell, how he went from a perceived enemy, from your days coaching on “The Ultimate Fighter” in 2013, to now a coach whom you trust and admire?
RR: It started off as I thought he was being patronizing and fake. And it turns out this is a common theme with Ricky, that he’s so nice that people don’t think that he’s for real. And Trav convinced me to give him a chance because he was Trav’s coach, and so we ended up staying at his place, and then he ended up having a job out here training the Navy Seals for a few years. And so he would stop by and learn judo from me to try to get his black belt, which he did end up getting for judo. And then he was like taking my judo and teaching it to the Seals. And he just kind of got me back on the mat. And, you know, excited to be training again and doing martial arts again. His contract with the Seals ran out just about the time I was like, “Hey, how would you feel about helping me with this training camp?” And he just completely jumped at the opportunity right away. He cleared out his garage and put a whole gym in his garage, a sauna and a cold tub in there, and got a hyperbaric chamber in there. And then he got an Octagon built at his friend’s place down the street, and then he actually lent us the cage that’s in our garage here. And his wife, Lindsie, is cooking me all my meals out there, and helping me with the kids. And, yeah, he really stepped up and tried to make it as convenient for me as possible with the kids, because I literally was waiting until I was cleared by the doctors to start training again. So this training camp is basically as old as my baby. All the training has been very family-centric and family-focused. So it didn’t feel like I had to take too much away from one to be there for the other.
Q: Was there a reason for training with Ricky and not returning to Glendale Fighting Club, where you trained pretty much all your MMA career?
RR: You know, I just kind of felt like I need to do a change, like those negative associations I had with MMA before. And in order to do that, I had to change my environment, to change my mindset.
Q: You told me this fight has been in the making since you were nine months pregnant. How did this even come up so many years later?
RR: Well, you know, I was like, I was having fun getting back on the mat again, and it had a lot to do with seeing Mike Tyson come back at almost 60. His event was the most-viewed combat sports event of all time. Since then, Jake Paul hasn’t nearly hit those same numbers. You know, a lot of that had to do with Mike Tyson. It was that he has something that is very much missed, and I know that me and Gina have something that is very much missed. And it was always in my mind that she would be the one fight that I would come back for. And when I saw people still dying to see Mike Tyson fight, I knew that there’s still a want out there to see me fight again. And so when I saw where Gina was at, and she gained a really unhealthy amount of weight, and I felt like it’d be exactly what she would need to give her the goal that she needs to pull herself out of that low point. Like I felt like that – this fight is exactly what I needed at this time as well. Then when I reached out to the UFC and it didn’t work out, it turned out like, “OK, we’re going to end up self-promoting this.” Because I always knew that that was an option. And when Dana gave me his blessing for us to go do it on our own, then it was like this isn’t just a huge opportunity laying there for me and Gina. This is a huge opportunity laying there for the entire sport.
Q: You are truly one of the pioneers of women’s MMA. For you to come up with this on your own years later, in this sport you took it to a different level, to be back and to do it again, I think is such a wild renaissance.
RR: Thank you. Yeah, and that’s so funny, like it’s not what I intended it to be from the beginning just with women’s MMA, it’s not what I intended to do from the beginning. I just wanted to have a job doing what I love with this. I just wanted to have my dream fight, you know? That was it. And then the repercussions of just wanting to do that one thing, it reached so much farther than I ever could have imagined from the beginning. If this is a huge success and Netflix wants to continue going forward, doing MMA events with MVP, this is actually going to give athletes real bargaining power. Or maybe for the first time, it’s going to completely change the landscape of the sport. It’s like, the UFC under TKO, I just don’t recognize it. It’s not the company that I helped build. It’s turned into something else entirely. This is what I can do to try and put some power back into the fighters’ hands, because people pay to see the fighters. They don’t pay to see the brand.
(At this point, Rousey’s 4-year-old daughter walks in during the interview and shares a moment with her mom as they animatedly discuss squishy eggs and dinosaurs and alligators.)
Q: No joke, my next question is, how is motherhood treating you? Talk about a great transition.
RR: It’s incredible. It’s been the best thing ever. It’s helped me grow up so much and redistribute my own priorities. And yeah, it puts everything in perspective. Everything that I do was for them. Anything else is just for fun. And it’s like, I used to think that I had to, you know, everything had to be the end of the world all of the time, and I had to be miserable in order to get better. And now it’s like, “Oh, wait. No, I’m going completely backwards about it.”
Q: How has training felt nearly 10 years and two kids later?
RR: Honestly, it’s better than ever, because I got to train for a year with nobody knowing. There was no press, there was no weight cuts. I was just like, I’m just gonna get as good as I can and be consistent. And I just really was finding my joy in fighting and being in that lifestyle again. And when you’re a mom, it’s all about everybody else. So I got to be a little selfish, and be like, “OK, my body and what I’m doing is a priority right now.” And it’s just so much easier. Like mentally and just recovering from having a baby and bringing my body back and everything like that. I’ve never felt healthier. Like, this is what my body wants to do. It craves this kind of activity. What I feel different at this age is just recovery is so much different. I get way more sore. And so instead of doing two-a-days, I switch to doing one marathon session, where I’ll just go for like three, four hours straight and do everything. And then I spend the whole rest of the day on recovery. In my 20s, I could just wake up and be sore, but I could push through it. Now I wake up and I’m like prohibitively sore.
Q: This press tour with Gina Carano has been fascinating to watch, especially the interaction between you two. There’s no mean mugging, there’s no trash talking each other. How’s that been for you to be facing an opponent where there’s so much mutual respect?
RR: I think that what I’ve loved with this fight is proving to everybody that there’s more than one way to promote a fight, and people can tell when animosity is fabricated. And all the success in my life is owed to her, to her showing me what I wanted to do with the rest of my life, because it would not have ever entered my mind if I hadn’t seen her doing it. And like, I have so much gratitude for her. And for us, like in this whole process of making this fight card happen, like we had to fight to fight each other, and she had to put a lot of trust in me to make this happen. And we were acquaintances before, and I’m trying my best not to be friends at this point, but like, we’ve been through so much to get here that it’s like we just feel like we know that we’re intertwined by fate.
Q: You’ve had your detractors concerning the fight, but I saw the other day that your last opponent, Amanda Nunes, said she thought this fight was good for women’s MMA. How do you see women’s MMA right now?
RR: Well, I think women’s MMA in general, like, I think it feels like they’re coasting, you know, like they’re not breaking any new ground. They’re not bringing in any new fans. They’ve lost the 145-pound division. They’re actually losing ground, and I’m concerned about it. Like, who is it in the women’s division that is bringing people in that aren’t fight fans to watch fighting? I think it’s that promotion aspect that a lot of them are not prioritizing. You have to promote as hard as you train, and that’s just part of being a professional fighter, and not an Olympian or an athlete for something that’s a nonprofit. People need to watch you fight. I think the women need to realize that their position is precarious, you know, and that they’re shedding divisions already, and yours could be next. And you need to act like it. You need to act like you’re fighting for your place to be there.
Q: So how’s it going to be to hear that crowd at Intuit Dome and walk out once more, and for the last time, to “Bad Reputation” by Joan Jett?
RR: You know, I think I’ll actually try to take it in this time instead of walking out. I used to, like, want to teleport, from the present until after the fight, and I had already won. And I actually, at this point, I would not give up that experience for the world. I want to go through it, you know? Feel those nerves and that anxiety and that rush and, you know, like flying a fighter jet is really uncomfortable, but it’s exhilarating. You know, like doing this, aspiring to this kind of a crazy goal is uncomfortable, but it’s exhilarating. And I’m actually going to be taking it in this time instead of just trying to get through it.
Q: How do you see Saturday night going?
RR: I mean, I would love to give her the Rousey special. You know, everyone walks out unscathed and richer. You know? I mean, I get that first-round armbar, and everyone goes home happy. I’m prepared for, you know, a five-round slugfest. I have the endurance and I’m ready for it. But I, as a judoka, maximum efficiency, minimum effort is what I’m always going for. You know, I want to go out there and I want to put on something like a performance that’s perfect, that people see and they’re like, “Damn, that’s martial arts. Like, that’s (freaking) beautiful.”
Most Valuable Promotions: Rousey vs. Carano
Main event: Ronda Rousey (12-2) vs. Gina Carano (7-1)
When: Saturday
Where: Intuit Dome
How to watch: prelims (3 p.m. YouTube); main card (6 p.m., Netflix)