Former WWE Superstar Ronda Rousey (age 39) is returning to MMA after 10 years. On May 16 on Netflix, the UFC Hall of Famer will face fellow women’s MMA pioneer, Gina Carano (age 43), in an MMA Superfight.
This will be a Featherweight (145 lbs) bout and will be contested over five 5 minute rounds. This will take place at the Intuit Dome in Los Angeles.
A LEGACY SHOWDOWN 🔥 #RouseyCarano
RONDA ROUSEY vs. GINA CARANO
Saturday May 16
LIVE only on Netflix pic.twitter.com/cybtQHNyPT— Netflix Sports (@netflixsports) February 17, 2026
This fight will be promoted by Most Valuable Promotions, not the UFC. During an interview on The Jim Rome Show, Ronda revealed that this fight was originally scheduled to take place in the UFC and she received a record-breaking deal from Dana White, but eventually their agreement fell apart when Gina needed from time to prepare and UFC’s Paramount streaming deal started, which meant the pay-per-view model was over and Rousey was no longer getting her PPV money deal that was agreed upon initially.
Here’s what Rousey said:
“I asked Dana (White) if he’d be interested. And he was like, ‘Of course, I’d be interested.’ And he like sent me this voice memo where — I can tell when he’s super excited about something, because he stutters. And he was stuttering all over the voice memo. I’m like, ‘Oh, he’s down.’
And so he reached out to Gina, and she said that she’d already lost 25 pounds and this was like, that walk back into the cage again is something that she’s always wanted to do. And so that’s when the talk started happening and got that interest from her. She was down from the first mention of it.
Originally I wanted to do it for New Year’s. And [Dana White] — you know, I went to him and I’m like, ‘Dude, you always say that I’m the best fighter you ever worked with. Reward me for it. Don’t punish me for being easy to work with. Give me the best deal you ever gave anybody.’
And he was, ‘All right, I’m going to go back and get you the best deal I ever had.’ So, he came back and he’s literally brought me a deal where I would make more per PPV buy than anybody in history. If I hit my historical numbers, which I know we would have been able to succeed, I would have made as much as I did in my entire career. And I was like, ‘Hell yeah, Dana, high five. Thanks.’
But Gina needed more time. And it happened to go to the other side of when ESPN’s deal and their PPV model would be ending and they would be going to streaming (with Paramount). And you know, they’re now a publicly traded company. And they… how do I put it? They didn’t want to set a precedent of giving me the guaranteed money that I deserve, because once I raise that tide, it lifts all the boats. And they just made a $7.7 billion deal at Paramount.
So it’s in their best interest actually not to put on the best fights possible, but to spend as little money as possible so that he can keep it. Dana’s now legally obligated to maximize shareholder value. It’s not just about proving the concept of fighting and putting on the best fights possible, and proving that this is a sport to be taken seriously.
I think now that it’s gone into — now that they’ve sold the company, it’s kind of out of Dana’s hands, unfortunately. And now it’s falling onto Hunter Campbell and UFC Corp., where they don’t care about putting on the best fights possible. They care about putting on the most cost-effective fights possible.
So it no longer made sense for me to go over there, because they didn’t want to pay us the money that we deserve. Because then for the rest of the time of the deal, they’re going to have to pay everybody else more. And so then I decided to look elsewhere.”
