“The Most-Viewed MMA Fight of All Time” Ronda Rousey Sets Huge Target for Gina Carano Return
Ronda Rousey is aiming high as she prepares to face Gina Carano this weekend, predicting their matchup will become the most-watched MMA event in history and a landmark for women’s combat sports. The bout is set to stream on Netflix as the platform’s first MMA event, adding a new player to a broadcast landscape long dominated by pay-per-view and traditional sports networks.
For Rousey, the stakes go beyond a comeback; she frames the fight as the culmination of her origin story as a fighter and a chance to reset records she once set for the women’s game. In an interview with Complex, Rousey described the pressure and her expectations in candid terms.
“God, I mean, there’s big expectations. I’m expecting this to be the most-viewed MMA fight of all time. It’s the first MMA fight on Netflix. We’ve got the biggest stars in the sport, and Gina is my dream fight. She’s the only person I would come back to fight for, and she’s the whole reason why I got into fighting in the first place.”
How Ronda Rousey vs. Gina Carano Came Together
Carano enters this event as one of the original mainstream faces of women’s MMA, a fighter whose 7–1 professional record from 2006 to 2009 included high-profile appearances in Strikeforce and EliteXC, capped by a 2009 title fight with Cris Cyborg that headlined a Strikeforce card in San Jose on CBS.
That run ended with a first-round TKO loss to Cyborg, and Carano never fought again, instead moving into acting roles in television and film. Rousey, by contrast, helped launch the UFC women’s bantamweight division in 2012 and became the promotion’s first female champion, eventually headlining major UFC pay-per-views and crossing into movies, pro wrestling, and mainstream endorsement deals.
Rousey told Complex the Netflix fight started as a personal project rather than something presented to her from a promotion or broadcaster.
“There was no presenting. This was all my idea from the beginning. I was sitting in an office chair, nine months pregnant, and I saw a video of Gina giving an interview. There were a lot of things that kind of led up to me being primed for this. I think a big thing was Mike Tyson making his comeback at nearly 60, being the most-viewed combat sports event of all time. So I kind of put it in my mind that that wasn’t a nostalgia fest, that was people missing something that he brought.”
Although exact viewing figures for recent crossover events vary by source and platform, Tyson’s exhibition against Roy Jones Jr. on Triller in 2020 was widely reported as drawing more than a million pay-per-view buys and significant streaming traffic, showing that well-known names can still command attention even after long layoffs. Rousey’s comparison signals how she sees the Carano fight: not only as a nostalgia hook but as a response to an audience that she believes still wants to see them compete at the highest level.
She also pointed to pay milestones in women’s combat sports as part of her motivation, referencing Amanda Serrano surpassing her disclosed career-high purse.
“Then I saw that Amanda Serrano had broken my record for the highest purse ever. I didn’t realize that I had created a ceiling for other women. I was like, ‘Oh my god, I would destroy that record now.’ And then I saw Gina. She had just been cancelled and was obviously going through a hard time. She was always busy doing Hollywood stuff before, and I thought, ‘Man, she really needs this fight.’ Then I was thinking, ‘Damn, that would be a huge fight, me and her. It’d be the biggest thing to ever happen to the sport.’”
Serrano’s seven-figure payday for her boxing showdown with Katie Taylor at Madison Square Garden in 2022 marked a historic benchmark for women’s fight purses, with both fighters reportedly clearing seven figures for the event and signaling new commercial potential for women at the top of the card. For Rousey, seeing that shift seems to have crystallized the idea that a Netflix-headlined matchup between two pioneers could push audience and financial records again.
Whether Rousey’s prediction of the “most-viewed MMA fight of all time” proves accurate will depend on how Netflix’s global reach and promotional push stack up against traditional pay-per-view records that have long been held by UFC and boxing crossovers. What is clear is that the event, pairing one of the UFC’s foundational champions with one of Strikeforce’s early stars, arrives at a moment when women’s combat sports have never been more visible or commercially viable.
