Ronda Rousey and Gina Carano are finally fighting.
Most Valuable Promotions confirmed the two will meet in a five-round featherweight bout on May 16 at Intuit Dome in Inglewood, California, streaming live on Netflix at no additional cost to subscribers. It marks the platform’s first MMA broadcast and MVP’s first venture into the sport after building its name through a series of high-profile boxing events.
The contest will be held at 145 pounds under the Unified Rules of MMA, with four-ounce gloves inside a hexagon cage. The specific athletic commission overseeing the event has not yet been identified. A kickoff press conference is scheduled for March 5 at Intuit Dome, when tickets go on sale via Ticketmaster. The undercard has not been announced.
BREAKING:
— Ariel Helwani (@arielhelwani) February 17, 2026
Ronda Rousey vs. Gina Carano is a DONE DEAL.
The details:
May 16. Intuit Dome in Inglewood, Calif.
Live on NETFLIX. Promoted by MVP.
The first MMA card to air live on NETFLIX. MVP’s first MMA card, too.
The two biggest names in WMMA history. Both coming out of… pic.twitter.com/hRdn3pVt2o
Carano, now 43, went 7-1 in MMA between 2006 and 2009 and became the face of women’s competition at a time when the sport was still earning mainstream recognition. She headlined the first major all-women MMA main event in 2009, challenging Cris Cyborg for the Strikeforce featherweight title before losing by TKO. She has not competed in sanctioned MMA since that night, making her absence from the sport roughly 17 years by the time May arrives.
Rousey, now 39, took a different path. An Olympic bronze medalist in judo at the 2008 Beijing Games, she became the first American woman to win an Olympic judo medal before transitioning to combat sports. She captured the Strikeforce women’s bantamweight title in 2012 and became the UFC’s first women’s champion, defending the belt six times between 2013 and 2015. Her title reign ended when Holly Holm knocked her out that November. A final attempt at reclaiming gold ended with a KO loss to Amanda Nunes in December 2016, her last MMA appearance. In the years since, she competed in WWE, winning the championship three times before stepping away in 2022.
For fans who followed women’s MMA through its early years, the matchup carries real weight. These are the two fighters whose names were attached to each other long before it was ever possible to make the fight official, and now, with both well past their competitive primes, it is happening.
According to Carano, the push came from Rousey herself.
“Ronda came to me and said there is only one person she would make a comeback for,” Carano said in the official announcement. “It’s been her dream to make this fight happen between us. She thanked me for opening up doors for her career and was respectful in asking for this fight to happen. This is an honor. I believe I will walk out of this fight with the win, and I anticipate it will not come easy, which I welcome.”
Rousey confirmed as much in her own statement. “Been waiting so long to announce this: Me and Gina Carano are gonna throw down in the biggest super fight in women’s combat sport history,” she said. “This is for all MMA fans, past, present, and future.”
MVP co-founder Nakisa Bidarian pointed to Rousey’s commercial track record as central to the event’s appeal. “What other female has sold 50,000-plus tickets to an event and generated millions of pay-per-views,” Bidarian said. “She transcends combat sports and represents the greatness that every young athlete hopes to achieve.”
Netflix VP of Sports Gabe Spitzer framed the announcement as a deliberate next step following the platform’s boxing run. “After the record-breaking success in boxing, we wanted our first MMA event to be truly legendary,” Spitzer said. “We’re thrilled to continue our partnership with MVP and bring together Ronda Rousey and Gina Carano to deliver the kind of high-stakes, icon-driven competition that our members crave.”
In 2014, the UFC tried to put this fight together, but it dropped, allegedly due to a text message from Dana White that scuppered its possibility, according to Gina Carano during an interview with Ariel Helwani.
Carano’s return carries its own story outside of the fight itself. After her MMA career ended in 2009, she moved into acting, appearing in Haywire, Fast and Furious 6, Deadpool, and most prominently as Cara Dune in The Mandalorian. Disney and Lucasfilm terminated her contract in February 2021 following controversy over social media posts. Carano filed a discrimination lawsuit against Disney, which was settled in 2025. Netflix, Disney’s most prominent streaming rival, is now the platform putting her back in front of a global audience.
Her coach at Syndicate MMA, John Wood, indicated she had been back in the gym for some time before the announcement was made. “When you’re a real fighter, and Gina is, it never goes away,” Wood said. “Once you kind of get back in the gym and start realizing, ‘Oh s***, I can still do this’ — she can, man. She’s still got some pop.”
Ring rust will be a legitimate factor for both. Rousey has not competed in sanctioned MMA in nearly a decade. Carano has been out for closer to 17 years. Details on their training camps and preparation timelines have not been made public ahead of the March 5 press conference.
Holly Holm, the fighter who ended Rousey’s title run, has recently signed with MVP, adding an interesting dimension to where the promotion goes from here, depending on how May 16 lands.
Financial terms for either fighter have not been disclosed. The full undercard remains unannounced. What is confirmed: the fight is sanctioned, the venue is set, and after more than a decade of speculation, Rousey and Carano will share a cage.
