Gina Carano has revealed the full timeline of how her May 16 fight against Ronda Rousey came together, and the path ran through a collapsed UFC deal before Rousey stepped in to finish the job herself.
Speaking with Ariel Helwani on Wednesday, Carano explained that Dana White made the first call in December 2024, months after she had already begun working on her own to get back into fighting shape.
"Dana called in December," Carano said. "From September 2024 to when Dana called in December, I had lost about 30 lbs by that point, but I had a long way to go."
White had spent the back half of 2024 publicly teasing a major announcement, which Carano confirmed was tied to her. She asked him to stay quiet while she found a gym and got into condition without public scrutiny. Those initial conversations were UFC conversations, and they eventually stalled.
Carano was candid about where her negotiating leverage actually sat. "I didn't really have that much negotiating power, except for the fact that Ronda wants to fight me. I'm the only one she wants to fight. So I was just like, 'Ronda, go for it.'"
When the UFC negotiations went nowhere, Rousey handled it personally. The two women, linked by dream fight hypotheticals for more than a decade, finally sat down together in person.
"She really led the way, she led the way a thousand percent. I just said yes. And then when their negotiations weren't going anywhere, she called me personally. And then we had dinner and actually talked about it," Carano said.
The fight landed at Most Valuable Promotions with Netflix as the distribution partner, making Carano the headliner of the first live MMA card the streamer has ever produced. For Carano, the entire process had a clarity that she found grounding.
"When you have a purpose and a goal, this goal of a fight has really just consumed me and put a protective shield over me that I needed to experience," she said. "It's very selfish. Eat, sleep, train. I needed to live like this for a second. And I'm already going to miss it."
Carano vs. Rousey headlines the Netflix card on May 16 at the Intuit Dome in Los Angeles.
