Gina Carano returns from a 17-year break to make an improbable MMA comeback against Ronda Rousey

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The idea of returning to any professional sport after a break of nearly 17 years seems preposterous.

Doing it in a sport as dangerous as mixed martial arts? Gina Carano realizes it seems like something that could — maybe should — only happen in the movies.

Carano is doing it anyway Saturday night when she fights Ronda Rousey in the main event of Netflix’s first MMA show. Their bout could be the most-watched combat sports event of the year, and it puts the 44-year-old Carano back under the competitive spotlight she left in 2009, when she was 27.

The trailblazing fighter built and lost a high-profile acting career in the lengthy interim, but an offer from Rousey and a revelatory return to MMA training have altered her perspective on what’s possible and what’s important in life.

“I think this fight is happening right when it should,” Carano said this week after she was cheered at a promotional public workout on famed Venice Beach. “Right now, I’m in such a solid place. I had to go through life in order to get here, and maybe other people get there a little bit younger. But for me, I’m a little bit of a late maturer. It happened for me now, and I’m so happy.”

Carano actually knows plenty about Hollywood — and about Hollywood endings, too.

Carano was one of the most famous fighters from the early days of MMA, when the violent sport struggled for legitimacy and media attention in the 2000s. She was the first woman to become a crossover star, with her face on CBS and Showtime several years before the UFC began promoting women’s fights with Rousey’s ascendance.

A week after Cris Cyborg stopped Carano in August 2009 in the first women’s bout to headline a major MMA event, she got a call from film director Steven Soderbergh, who had seen her fight on TV. He hired Carano to star in “Haywire,” a superb action thriller that catapulted her toward bigger and bigger roles in the years to come.

Although acting took over her life, Carano never forgot about martial arts — and she grinningly points out that she never retired.

She still trained to keep fit, and because her husband and longtime partner, Kevin Ross, is a now-retired kickboxer. She occasionally entertained offers for a comeback, but the timing and the money were never right.

Instead, she became passionate about watching the professional sport, even hosting parties at her home for UFC, One Championship and Glory kickboxing events.

“When I was able to step away from mixed martial arts, I became such a fan,” Carano said. “And now to be back around it, and to have Ronda and (co-main event fighter) Nate (Diaz) and people that I had some sort of connection with in the past, but now being on their card and fighting one of them, I’m still a fan, (but) it’s pretty wild to be able to be here and be a part of it.”

Carano’s acting career crashed in 2021 after she made a series of incendiary social media posts espousing strident right-wing views. Her talent agency dropped her, Lucasfilm condemned her actions, and she has only appeared in two films released by conservative producers in the half-decade since.

Carano said her fall from entertainment grace left her downbeat, overweight and battling additional undisclosed health problems. That’s how Rousey saw her idol in a television interview a couple of years ago, and it inspired them to get together to make the fight that’s happening Saturday.

“She was my hero getting into the sport, and this is what brought us together,” Rousey said. “We went from acquaintances to … well, we’re trying our best not to be friends and not communicate. I desperately want to hit her up for every press conference and be like, ‘What color are you wearing?’ Because I really want to be able to match, so I have to try and pick colors that will match anything.”

The fight also compelled Carano to return to serious MMA training — the time-consuming work of building stamina, sharpening her striking power and dulling her shins and fists to the pain inherent in the sport.

Training has changed in the past decade-and-a-half — and so had Carano, who felt a mid-life grounding and focus she never had before.

“Oh man, it’s been hard,” Carano said. “Training has been grueling, but it’s just the consistency — once you give into the fact you’re going to get up and dedicate yourself to this every single day until you fight, and you’re responsible for that. Nobody else is. None of my coaches are telling me, ‘You have to do this.’ (I realize) I have to do this. I have to do it for myself. … I just think I’m a better overall martial artist than I was ever, and my head is actually attached to my body this time around. I was in the clouds in my 20s. I do not miss that.”

More than 6,100 days after her loss to Cyborg, Carano will enter another cage at Intuit Dome in Inglewood, California. Carano has rebuilt her game in the gym, and she seems quietly confident she can strike with Rousey, who is ending her own 9 1/2-year absence from competition.

While Rousey has claimed this is her final fight, Carano said she has no idea what her sporting future holds — and she likes it that way.

“I took responsibility for everything that happens in the cage on Saturday,” Carano said. “I feel like the ‘hard’ is what makes it worth it, because this week I don’t have to cut any weight. I feel great. I wish all my training camps would have been like this. I wish we would have always been in this good-vibes situation. But we lived and we learned, and here we are, getting to relive it and do it right.”

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