Ronda Rousey is coming back to mixed martial arts on May 16, 2026, and the fight that brings her there is Gina Carano. The former UFC champion said the matchup, set under Jake Paul’s MVP and Netflix, suddenly pulled her back toward the sport after nearly a decade away.
Rousey said she had not been itching for a fight for the last nine years, but the idea of meeting Carano changed that. “But I didn’t have any desire to reopen it until the idea for this match came into my mind, and that suddenly reignited that fire in me again,” she said.
The return lands after a long and uneven stretch between combat sports and pro wrestling. Rousey went back to WWE in 2022, won the Women’s Royal Rumble and then faced Charlotte Flair at WrestleMania 38. Her second WWE run ended in August 2023 with an MMA Rules match against Shayna Baszler at SummerSlam, a bout she said made her miss MMA a little bit.
That Baszler match was not just a farewell, according to Rousey. She called it “a big middle finger” to WWE fans and to people in the business who would not get it, and said, “I wanted to give the big middle finger to all the fans on the way out and put on the fight that I wanted to put on with my best friend.”
She also described it as self-indulgent and said she loved having that fight as her last match. “I love that fight being my [last] match,” she said. The way she framed it, the bout with Baszler did not just close one chapter. It reminded her what she had been missing.
Rousey said the exchange with Baszler let them actually work and strike in a way that stirred something she had put aside. “Because we got to actually flow around a bit, and we were actually hitting each other. We’re like, ‘Just go for the forehead.’ And stuff like that. [laughs]”
That is the tension inside this return: Rousey says she had settled into family life and was not looking to reopen the old door, then one fight idea brought her back to it. She said she would need to grow up rather than join Bloodsport, the Game Changer Wrestling event that uses no ropes and ends matches by knockout or submission.
For now, the path is set. Rousey is headed back to MMA on May 16, 2026, and the sport that she said had been quiet in her mind for years is suddenly active again.
