Ronda Rousey reveals Mike Tyson and pregnancy’s role in her MMA return

After years on the sidelines, Ronda Rousey is now coming very close to her long-awaited MMA return. Last seen losing to Amanda Nunes in 2016, Rousey soon left UFC and MMA to pursue a career in professional wrestling. After a successful run in WWE until 2023, Rousey parted ways with the promotion.

Following this, she went on hiatus and gave birth to her second daughter in early 2025. She has now revealed her pregnancy to be a motivating factor in her MMA comeback. Speaking to Geeks Vibes Nation, Rousey was asked what reinvigorated her return.

“You know, Mike Tyson’s comeback [against Jake Paul in 2024] being the biggest combat sport of all time was one of them. And I saw where she was at, and I was looking at my big belly and where I was at. I was like, man, a fight between us would be huge. It would be huge. It’d be bigger than my belly,” she said. “I’m like, it’s precisely what we need. It’s precisely what would pull us out of this, not that being hugely pregnant is a rut, but it is like, you know, it’s a bodily identity crisis. And I just knew after seeing her that this is exactly what she and I needed.”

She also opened up and revealed how she wanted to bring back Gina Carano from the dark hole she had fallen into. Rousey claimed that following a controversy, Carano was “canceled,” which resulted in her eating unhealthily and gaining weight. Rousey was inspired to bring her back from that.

“This was the closure that we both needed in the sport. And this is like, everybody loves a redemption story. And I knew that I would be coming back just for me because I was the one making the phone call. You know what I mean? Nobody was calling me. Nobody, it got to the point where every single person I saw all day wasn’t asking me, When are you going to fight again? When are you going to fight again? Everyone had finally given up on it. So then I knew it was coming just from me. So I reached out to her, and she was down, and that was well over a year ago,” she said.

Announced earlier this year, Rousey is now scheduled to fight Gina Carano in May. 2026 at Intuit Dome in Los Angeles, California. The fight will be under the banner of Jake Paul’s MVP and streamed live on Netflix.

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