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Ronda Rousey explains Dana White talks for Gina Carano fight to happen in UFC ‘didn’t work out’

Originally posted on Bloody Elbow | By Donagh Corby | Last updated Feb 17, 2026 9:55 PM ET

Ronda Rousey has detailed how she went to Dana White to host her comeback fight, before landing with Most Valuable Promotions.

The legendary former bantamweight champion will take on Gina Carano on May 16 at the Intuit Dome in California. Rousey last competed in 2016 when Nakisa Bidarian was UFC CFO, and now he is promoting her comeback alongside Jake Paul in their company’s first ever MMA event that will broadcast on Netflix.

Carano and Rousey have been in talks to fight since 2014, and re-ignited the flame towards the back end of last year. Their fight announcement was viewed over 6 million times in a matter of hours on Instagram alone, and they will come head-to-head in three weeks’ time for a press conference.

Ronda Rousey tried to get Dana White to stage Gina Carano fight

While Ronda Rousey was pregnant with her first child, Gina Carano was going through a controversial exit from Disney’s ‘The Mandalorian’, where she had played a key role. By the time Rousey was having her second child, she watched an interview where she felt Carano didn’t look her best.

Neither woman was in contact with the other at the time, but the former UFC bantamweight champion realized that both of them ‘needed’ the chance to get back in the cage. And she instantly went to Dana White, who it appears opted against putting on the event.

“I always said that Gina is the one person I’d come back to fight for,” Rousey told ESPN’s SportsCenter in her first interview since the fight was confirmed on Tuesday. “I thought, ‘She needs this. She needs this fight.’

“The more that I thought about it, I thought, ‘I need this. I need this fight.’ I reached out to Dana [White] and asked him if he would be interested in it and it didn’t exactly work out with the UFC. But it led us to here today.”

Gina Carano agreed to Ronda Rousey fight back in 2014

This isn’t the first time that Carano and Rousey have been matched. They are two of the biggest stars in the history of MMA regardless of gender, and the former has claimed that she was offered $1million to fight her friend during the height of Rousey’s fame.

Unfortunately, her timeline for building a team and getting back into competition training was said to be too long, and talks broke down between her and White. Now, at the age of 43, she gets the chance to finally make one of the biggest bouts ever in women’s MMA.

This article first appeared on Bloody Elbow and was syndicated with permission.

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