Ronda Rousey Wwe Rekindled Her MMA Return for Gina Carano Fight
Ronda Rousey says ronda rousey wwe helped bring her back to MMA for a May 16, 2026 fight with Gina Carano. She said the idea came only after her second WWE run ended, turning a finish in one combat sport into the reason she reopened another.
May 16, 2026 Return
Rousey fought Carano on May 16, 2026 after nearly a decade away from MMA. She said, "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" — a rare case of a wrestling storyline feeding directly into a comeback fight.
She also said, "I think the match with Shayna is what made me miss MMA a little bit". That puts her last WWE run in a different light: not as a dead end, but as the event that made her want to compete again.
Shayna Baszler Match
Rousey's second WWE run ended in August 2023 with an MMA Rules match against Shayna Baszler at SummerSlam. She called it "a big middle finger to WWE fans and people in the business who would not get it," and said, "I love that fight being my [last] match. I think it would've probably gone much better over at like Bloodsport or something like that, but I think it was kind of the best way for me to be able to say goodbye".
She added, "And being the true heel, 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." That friction is the story here: the same match she framed as a defiant exit also pulled her back toward MMA.
WrestleMania 38 To Carano
Rousey returned to WWE in 2022 by winning the Women's Royal Rumble, then faced Charlotte Flair at WrestleMania 38. From there, her path bent back toward MMA only after the Shayna Baszler bout made her miss it, which explains why the Carano fight landed as the peak she wanted to chase.
She put it bluntly: "I don't know — I mean, I know we could put on something great, but man, I feel like I gotta grow up. I gotta grow up and go have some more kids, and go to some soccer matches or something," which reads less like a tease for another run and more like a hard stop. For readers, the takeaway is straightforward: Rousey's MMA return was not a generic comeback, but a direct outcome of her WWE exit, and she says this fight with Carano is the peak she does not expect to top.
