Ronda Rousey is coming back to MMA on May 16, 2026, nearly a decade after she last fought in the sport, and she says the return only happened because something finally clicked. The former UFC champion will face Gina Carano for Jake Paul’s MVP and Netflix, ending years of saying she had no desire to reopen that part of her life.
Rousey said she had not been itching for a fight in the last nine years, but also felt that something in MMA was unfinished. That changed after her second WWE run, which began in 2022 when she won the Women’s Royal Rumble and moved on to Charlotte Flair at WrestleMania 38. The road back to fighting got sharper in August 2023, when her WWE exit came in an MMA Rules match against Shayna Baszler at SummerSlam.
Rousey said that match made her miss MMA a little bit. She said the bout gave her a chance to move and strike in a way that felt closer to what she remembered, even joking that they were telling each other to go for the forehead while working through it. More than that, she said the fight with Baszler reignited the fire that had gone quiet for years and made the Carano matchup possible.
That is the part that makes this return land now. Rousey had previously said she did not want to reopen her MMA career until the idea for the Carano fight came into her mind. The timing matters because she is not stepping back into combat sports in the abstract; she is doing it for a specific opponent, on a specific card, with a clear end to the wait she says had lingered since her last serious run.
Her last WWE match was also a statement. Rousey said the MMA Rules bout with Baszler was a big middle finger to WWE fans and people in the business who would not get it, and that she loved it as her final match. She said it probably would have gone over better in a setting like Bloodsport, but that it was the best way for her to say goodbye and to put on the fight she wanted with her best friend. She said she wanted to have a great time and shove that match down their throat on the way out.
That exit fits the way Rousey now describes where she is in life. She said she needs to grow up instead of joining another combat sport, and said she ought to go have some more kids and go to some soccer matches or something. For now, though, the unfinished business she talked about is back on the calendar, and on May 16 she will find out whether the gap she felt in MMA closes the way she imagined when the Carano fight finally came into view.
