Ronda Rousey vs. Gina Carano may go down as the most watched fight in 2026 but what kind of expectations should be set about the actual quality of the event?
There’s been a lot of talk about the card taking place on May 16, which airs on Netflix, and how Jake Paul’s Most Valuable Promotions is making a significant dent in the sport with the first ever MMA card from the organization. But it’s also impossible to ignore that Rousey is returning to action for the first time in a decade while Carano hasn’t fought in 17 years and they are a combined 83 years old.
The highly anticipated showdown will undoubtedly draw a lot of eyeballs but retired UFC welterweight Matt Brown can’t help but wonder if the actual fight between Rousey and Carano might leave the audience feeling sad rather than satisfied.
“It will do big numbers but who is actually going to care?” Brown said on the latest episode of The Fighter vs. The Writer. “How many times are going to walk away from a fight — like you were just talking about with Jake Paul and Mike Tyson — and kind of feel icky and wish that we didn’t watch it? I think we’re going to feel the same thing with this fight. Feel like we wasted our time. Maybe not feel icky but we’re going to feel like we wasted our time.
“How many times are we going to do that? At some point it’s going to play itself out. Probably if anything it’s all going to help the UFC. People are going to become fight fans and they’re like ‘I’m sick of this shit, can I just watch a real godd*amn fight? Oh yeah, we have a place that does that. It has all the best fights in the world. The UFC.”
In the leadup to the fight, Rousey has continuously bashed her former employers at the UFC after Dana White initially showed interest in booking the same fight with Carano but the promotion allegedly refused to offer the same kind of guaranteed money as MVP did after partnering with Netflix.
Rousey has actually spent more time taking aim at the UFC and even more recently going on a tirade against reigning women’s bantamweight champion Kayla Harrison than hyping up her actual fight against Carano.
While that makes for a great soundbite or viral clip for social media, Brown argues that Rousey is just bringing more attention to the UFC in the long run even if her commentary is all negative.
“Good old Ronda. Always giving us something to talk about,” Brown said with a laugh. “She just cracks me up at this point. I think it’s kind of comical. I don’t know if anybody actually takes her seriously. She seems like so angry about nothing sometimes and you’re just like can you just chill? You need to smoke some weed or something. Maybe she needs Xanax instead of weed. She just needs to take a chill pill.
“I don’t think anyone’s buying the schtick. Nobody believes that she’s going to f*ck with Kayla Harrison if somehow that ever was to come to fruition. No one’s buying into this shit.”
When it comes to Carano signing up to fight Rousey after 17 years away from the sport, Brown believes that’s the clearest indication that her interest really came down to money.
Now there’s certainly nothing wrong with any prize fighter grabbing the biggest prize possible but Carano walked away from MMA in 2009 and never looked back. That all changed with this fight against Rousey, which convinces Brown that this was all about a paycheck and not some long simmering interest in competing again.
“I don’t know if Gina even really cares,” Brown said. “She hasn’t fought in 17 years. Clearly she was done fighting and had no intention to fight again and then she gets a call and they offer her enough money where she’s like ‘OK, well, I’ll do that.’ It’s hard to believe it’s anything other than a paycheck.”
With less than a month to go until the event takes place, Rousey and Carano have almost seemed like best friends rather than two people about to fight each other but that may not really matter when it comes to interest in this event.
In fact, Brown doesn’t know if there’s much Rousey or Carano could say over the next few weeks to really drive interest in the actual fight rather than the spectacle that’s about to go down on May 16.
“Is there anything that would get you interested?” Brown said. “Even if they were at each other’s throats and talking all this shit, attacking each other’s families and throwing chairs at the press conference, you’d still be like ‘you two aren’t really going to give us that great of a fight.’
“You can cat fight that shit all you want, there’s nothing exciting about this.”
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