Gina Carano is still a little sore about never having the opportunity to step inside the Octagon with women’s MMA pioneer Ronda Rousey.
Before ‘Rowdy’ broke barriers and became the first-ever female UFC world champion, Carano was the most popular female fighter on the planet — and she did it during a time when Dana White downright refused to allow women to compete on his global platform.
Carano made a name for herself competing under the EliteXC and Strikeforce banners with her biggest career fight coming in 2009 against Cris Cyborg. After suffering a TKO loss against Cyborg in the opening round of their Showtime headliner, Carano would never step inside the cage again — though it wasn’t for a lack of trying.
Speaking with Patrick Bet-David on the PBD Podcast, Carano revealed that she was in talks with Dana White about booking a superfight between herself and Ronda Rousey. Of course, the fight would never come to fruition, but Carano shared some insight into why she never had the opportunity to close out her combat sports career inside the Octagon.
“I needed six months,” Carano said. “Because first of all, weight cutting for me during that time I would struggle because all of the women were in the 135 [pound] weight division and I could get down to 145 but there was only twice in my career where I got down to 136 and 139 and that is like chopping off a leg for me. It was so difficult for me but that’s where all the women were at that time because there wasn’t a lot of women.
“I sat down with Dana and [said] I wish you guys would have approached me five years ago because I’ve been waiting for this so I just need some time and I need you to keep it quiet, Dana. Keep it really quiet because I didn’t have a gym. I would have to go [re-immerse] myself in a gym, which when I go in a gym people put cameras on me and you have to find and build your team and I wasn’t living in Las Vegas, which is where my team was. So I was living in L.A. and it would have been hard and I needed to rebuild a team and do it right.
“Dana, and I love him now, he’s been amazing now but Dana’s Dana. He immediately started talking about it and it made my life very difficult to try and get to go into that.”
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Around the time that Rousey was becoming one of the biggest sports stars in the world, Gina Carano was finding success as an actress. Coming off a lead role in the action thriller Haywire directed by Academy Award-winning director Steven Soderbergh, Carano was fielding more and more offers to appear on the silver screen, making it difficult to juggle that on top of a potential return to MMA.
“It is a very difficult thing to try and do both of those things at once,” Carano said about acting and fighting. “In my head, I’m just so passionate about the storytelling and the last couple years I’ve just been passionate about trying to get back into that.”
After landing a role in Deadpool alongside Ryan Reynolds, Carano’s film career was off to the races and a comeback sports comeback officially fell by the wayside. Carano would go on to score a role in the massively popular Disney+ series The Mandalorian, though an ill-advised post on social media ultimately lost her the role.
Gina Carano Confident She Would Have Beaten Ronda Rousey
Carano went 7-1 in her MMA career, finishing three of her fights inside the distance. Though she never got the chance to test out Rousey’s skills firsthand, ‘Conviction’ is confident that had the fight come together, she would have won.
“I do, absolutely [believe I would have won],” Carano said. “Because I pack a hell of a punch. I know how she punches. I punch like a trucker. [She would have the edge] on the ground obviously but I’m scrambly.
“It’s no disrespect and I’m sure she would say the same thing that she would win, but that’s just something I know. After you’ve been punched like that, she got shook twice [by] Amanda Nunes and Holly Holm, I’m one of the hardest punchers that women’s mixed martial arts has ever seen.”
Carano made it clear that, despite her prediction, she has nothing but respect for Rousey and what she did for women in the sport. After all, it was Carano who Rousey often referenced as her inspiration for making the move from Judo to MMA.
“Ronda has just been such a respectful [person], she was such a little sh*t talker throughout her career, but the one person she didn’t really sh*t talk was me, really,” Carano said. “She really always did give me that tribute. To have not made the walk in the UFC and gotten to fight, to have the person that did really break down those barriers, that is very special to me and I think she’s a very special person.”
