Gina Carano made one thing clear in her conversation with Ariel Helwani on Wednesday: the friendship she and Ronda Rousey have built in the lead-up to May 16 ends when the cage door closes.
Speaking ahead of their Netflix fight at the Intuit Dome in Los Angeles, Carano was direct about what Rousey should expect from her when the fight begins and pushed back on any suggestion that showing up would be enough.
"Ronda's been waiting to fight me for a very long time," Carano said. "I don't want to disappoint. I want her to feel everything I have. I want her to feel what she's been chasing. It's respectful to her. This is what I feel like, this is what this experience with me is going to feel like. So yeah, we're going to go for it."
Helwani pressed Carano on whether the two women genuinely want to hurt each other. Her answer drew on what she described as a quality shared by most women who compete at a high level.
"If you have females sparring in the gym, it's really hard to not go heavy," Carano said. "Women just cut that emotional thing off and it's 'me or you.' Ronda has that. I have that. Most of the girls in the gym have that. So it's just: we're going to fight."
When Helwani asked whether the result even matters given the symbolic weight of the fight, Carano did not hesitate. "I really want to win. Like, I really want to win."
She framed May 16 as the proper conclusion to a chapter rather than the start of a new one. The fight is scheduled at featherweight with no one-pound allowance, matching the weight class she competed at throughout her EliteXC and Strikeforce career.
"For me it's purely about having gotten in shape, going through everything, getting back in there against an incredible opponent, putting on a great show. And really just going for that W and closing this part of my life."
She described the mindset shift that brought her to this point as a choice between two directions. "You can go left and choose to hate yourself and hate the world and all of that, or you can go right and get your shit together and say, 'I'm going to do everything I can.' I've chosen to go that direction, and I feel more alive than I've ever felt."
Carano vs. Rousey headlines the first live MMA card on Netflix on May 16 from the Intuit Dome in Los Angeles.
