Ronda Rousey has given her first interview since the shock news yesterday that she and Gina Carano are both coming out of retirement to fight each other on May 16th, live on Netflix.
During the interview, Rousey curiously claimed that her motivation to put this fight together came from her desire to get Carano back in shape.
“I was nine months pregnant, and I saw a video of Gina Carano giving an interview and she didn’t look good,” Rousey told ESPN. “She gained an unhealthy amount of weight and my first thought was, ‘Oh my god, what can I do to help?’ The reason why I had that thought was because she’s the one woman not only in MMA that doesn’t owe me a damn thing but that I owe immensely. I’m always trying to look out what I could do for her.
“Her family owns Caesar’s Palace and Rebel Oil. There’s nothing I could really do for her except for when I was in a similar spot, when I was depressed and gave up on the world and inadvertently gave up on myself. What I needed was a goal and something to reignite my passion again. I always said that Gina is the one person I’d come back to fight for. 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.’”
There’s no doubt that the 39-year-old Rousey has always had a lot of respect for Rousey. That being said though, you’d have to think that another part her motivation to comeback a decade after two brutal losses is that she has a very good chance of beating the 43-year-old Carano, who last fought 17 years ago.
Carano’s ground game was a weak point even in her prime years, and given Rousey’ decorated judo background and lethal armbar submission it’s no surprise that she’s opened as the overwhelming favorite with the oddsmakers for this match-up.
Still, it seems that Carano got on-board with the idea, and though it hasn’t been an easy journey, the fight is now going to happen.
“This has been in the making since I was pregnant, which is over a year ago,” Rousey said. “It took a long time to get us here… We fought for this. We fought to fight each other. There were a lot of obstacles along the way.
“I told her, if I have to go out there, and train you myself to fight me, I will. We made it happen. We had to work together to overcome every obstacle to get here. It’s really surreal because it’s been a secret for so long, I can’t believe I’m actually able to talk about it.”
Rousey also revealed that the original plan was to have the fight in the UFC, but it seems that option didn’t work out.
“I reached out to Dana and asked if he would be interested in it,” Rousey said. “It didn’t exactly work out with the UFC, but it led us to here today.”
It’s interesting that the UFC opted to pass up on such a big fight, particularly given that it now threatens to compete for attention with the marquee UFC: White House event that will take place just a month afterwards.
With that in mind you’d have to think that the odds of Conor McGregor appearing on the White House event have just gone up as the reality is that he is the only fighter available who can draw the kind of attention that Rousey did in her prime.
Even with McGregor on-board though, the massive reach that Netflix has means that Rousey vs. Carano has a very good chance of eclipsing what was supposed to be the most watched MMA event in history.
Watch Rousey’s full ESPN interview below.
