Five-round featherweight main event headlines MVP’s first sanctioned MMA card on Netflix
Ronda Rousey is coming back after a decade out to face Gina Carano at 145 pounds on May 16 at Intuit Dome in Los Angeles. The bout will be professionally sanctioned under the Unified Rules of MMA and stream live on Netflix to its global subscriber base.
This is not an exhibition. Five rounds. Five minutes each. Four-ounce gloves. Standard scoring criteria. If both women pass licensing and medicals, it goes on the books.
Rousey is 12-2 with nine submissions. Her game was always built on pressure, clinch entries, and the armbar. She never hid what she was coming with. She closed distance hard, tied up at the hips, and attacked the elbow before opponents could settle. When her timing slipped late in her career and she started eating straight rights on entry, the slide was quick. Head position and defensive reactions were her weak points once the aura faded.
Carano is 7-1 in MMA and 12-1-1 in Muay Thai. She was a striker first. Heavy low kicks in her prime, sharp combinations, solid base. She fought at a time when women’s MMA did not have the depth it does now. Her layoff is significant. Ring rust is real. Ten years out is not a training camp problem. It is a reaction-time problem.
The weight is 145. Rousey’s championship run was at bantamweight, 135. That extra ten pounds changes the pace and the clinch exchanges. At featherweight, the shots carry differently and the scrambles tax the lungs more.
Rousey said, “Been waiting so long to announce this: Me and Gina Carano are gonna throw down in the biggest super fight in women’s combat sport history!”
Carano said, “Ronda came to me and said there is only one person she would make a comeback for and it has been her dream to make this fight happen between us. She thanked me for opening up doors for her in her career and was respectful in asking for this fight to happen. This is an honor. I believe I will walk out of this fight with the win and I anticipate it will not come easy, which I welcome.”
Promotionally, this is Most Valuable Promotions stepping into sanctioned MMA for the first time. No title attached. No immediate ranking implication. There is no automatic path to a belt off this result. It is a headline event designed for scale, not divisional order.
Netflix carries it globally. That is the business hook. The competitive question is simpler. Can Rousey still close distance and finish an arm without absorbing clean counters on the way in? Can Carano hold the center, defend the clinch, and make Rousey strike in space?
Five rounds will answer that.
Date: May 16, 2026
Start time: 7 pm PT local, 10 pm ET USA, 3 am UK
Streaming platform: Netflix
Venue: Intuit Dome, Los Angeles, California
Fight card or results: Ronda Rousey vs Gina Carano, five rounds at 145 lbs, Unified Rules of MMA