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This Saturday will mark the end of Ronda Rousey’s nine-year hiatus from mixed karate, and if all goes as planned, it will be her farewell.
The 39-year-old is perhaps the biggest MMA star of all time, and she’s giving fans one more show as she takes on legendary fighter Gina Carano at the Intuit Dome in Inglewood, California, courtesy of Jake Paul’s Most Valuable Promotions.
“Yeah, I’m excited. Finally, like, it’s very real,” Rousey told Fox News Digital. “In the beginning, we were training in secret for, like, a year. It was really like a year and a half at this point, but at least more than a year. And now it’s kind of bittersweet that it’s going to end. I’ve been having a great time. This camp has been the most extraordinary thing of my life.”
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UFC Women’s Bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey celebrates her victory over Alexis Davis at UFC 175 inside the Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas, Nev., on July 5, 2014. (Donald Miralle/Zuffa LLC)
Rousey, the first woman signed by the UFC who became a Hall of Famer in 2018, retired in 2016 after six defenses of the UFC Women’s Bantamweight Championship before joining WWE full time. Rousey’s MMA record started at 12-0 before losing her last two bouts to Holly Holm and Amanda Nunes, respectively., and nine of Rousey’s 12 victories have come in the first 70 seconds. All but one victory was in the first round.
It’s no secret that Rousey is out of her prime, but this camp “doesn’t feel grindy at all.”
“We made happiness a priority – we actually enjoyed the show instead of hoping for happiness,” Rousey said. “Before, everything was very focused on the results. Now, it’s about the process. And when we did that change, ‘Let’s make this as fun as possible,’ I started getting better results than before. I feel better than before, physically and mentally.”
“I was very much in that old-school mentality, you have to suffer and make yourself miserable to be the best you can be. And now it’s like, no, I realize it shouldn’t be that. I can enjoy this as much as I can, and it makes me the best I can be. Because I already know that I’m bada –. those things. So I think to make it fun… just good vibes, it’s all about me, none of this other stuff happening around me, no big noise.”
So, why go back to square one?
Ronda Rousey and Gina Carano pose after the press conference for MMA’s Most Valuable Promotions card at the Palladium Theater in New York on April 15, 2026. (Photos by Ed Mulholland/Imagn)
RONDA ROUSEY RETURNS TO FIGHTING AFTER NEARLY 10-YEAR HIATUS: ‘THIS IS FOR ALL MMA FANS’
“Gina, that’s the reason,” she said.
“I was sitting nine months pregnant, about to come out, in an office chair. I saw him at a low level, losing his body identity and really unhealthy. And after seeing Mike Tyson come back at almost (age) 60 and become the most watched combat sports event of all time, I knew there was a huge need there and that these exhibition fights were the future of combat sports.
“When I saw where Gina was, and I looked down at my big belly, where I was, I said, ‘You know what? The fight between us would be huge not only in the world, but with each other.’ And I think this is what fighting games need. This is what we need. And just like he inspired me to do MMA in the first place, he’s the one who inspired me to come back.”
Rousey said she “promised my husband and swore up and down to my sister” that this was her last fight. Knowing that you are saying goodbye after almost ten years, all the emotions are at play.
“That fluttering in the chest, that fear, I know that’s what happens when I’m about to do big things. I’m not afraid of my anxiety or my fear, somehow. I can’t even write like that. I’m not afraid of how my body reacts to those things, because I know that’s what it does before I do something big. So I feel under those big symptoms when I feel above those symptoms. pressure, I’m not afraid of it and I’m afraid.
“It’s like the launch sequence before the rocket explodes.”
As excited as Rousey is, there is still a goal – to win. Admittedly, “if there’s anyone in this world that I would agree with to take my happiness and run with it, it’s Gina,” Rousey said.
“Because she’s the only person in women’s MMA who doesn’t owe me a damn—and she owes me a lot,” she added. “And if this is the only way I can get him back—to give him the comeback story of my life—I owe everything, every prosperity in my life, to him. If that’s the way it has to go, then that’s the way it has to go.”
But it won’t be easy.
UFC Women’s Bantamweight Champion Ronda Rousey interacts with the crowd during UFC Time Is Now and media at The Smith Center for the Performing Arts in Las Vegas, Nev., on Nov. 17, 2014. (Photos by Jeff Bottari/Zuffa LLC/Getty)
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“He’s going to have to pry the win out of my cold, dead fingers. Because I want to show him the monster he was made of. And I want him to be proud of me,” Rousey said.
“I want to hit the— it’s the biggest compliment I’ve ever paid him.”
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