Gina Carano Fell to Cris Cyborg in 2009 Title Fight
Gina Carano's last fight came in 2009, when she lost to Cris Cyborg in a first-round fight for the first Strikeforce women's featherweight championship. It was the first time two women headlined a major MMA event, and the crowd at HP Pavilion in San Jose topped 13,976.
Carano and Cyborg in San Jose
Carano met Cris Justino, known as Cyborg, with the belt on the line and came away on the wrong end of the title fight. That bout closed the book on her MMA run for years, after she had already helped push women’s fighting into wider view with a 2007 win over Julie Kedzie in the first women’s MMA fight aired on live TV.
The San Jose card drew a large enough audience to make the fight feel bigger than a simple title matchup. With 13,976 in attendance, the event gave the women’s headliner a scale few MMA fights had reached at the time, and Carano’s loss became the defining result attached to her career in the cage.
Cyborg's title trail
Cyborg entered that night with momentum that later stretched across multiple promotions. She made her professional debut in 2005 and lost that first fight, then built a record that reached 29-2 with 1 no contest. She also collected featherweight titles in Invicta FC, the UFC, Bellator and PFL.
Her Bellator run included a 6-0 mark, starting with a win over Julia Budd in her debut for that belt. In the PFL, she beat Larissa Pacheco and Sara Collins, then stopped Collins in December 2025 to win the PFL featherweight belt. Cyborg also has 21 knockout wins in MMA and five boxing victories since 2022.
Carano's return to fighting
Carano did not fight again until 2026, when she was slated to return against Ronda Rousey. She said, “I get to revive and reveal the fighting side of me because a lot of people either forgot or weren't around the last time I fought” and, “I've heard people say Ronda Rousey is fighting the girl from 'The Mandalorian.' No, I had a whole life that opened the doors to those movie opportunities, and it was me being a fighter, a genuine fighter who broke a lot of barriers.”
She added, “Everything I've gone through leading to this point already feels like a victory, but I'm not fighting Ronda just to say I fought Ronda Rousey. I'm fighting to win.” For Carano, the 2009 loss to Cyborg remains the last official result on her MMA ledger, and it is the fight that still defines the end of that first chapter.
