There are a lot of recurring themes when it comes to the genesis of fights. Pregnancy isn’t usually one of them.
But for Ronda Rousey, her fight vs. Gina Carano stemmed from just that. After having multiple children, Rousey said she saw Carano on social media looking out of shape – and decided it was best to reach out. Before she knew it, a fight was scheduled.
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“I was nine months pregnant, and I saw a video of Gina Carano giving an interview, and she didn’t look good,” Rousey said Tuesday on ESPN’s SportsCenter. “She gained an unhealthy amount of weight. My first thought was, ‘Oh my god. What can I do? What can I do to help?’ The reason I had that thought was she’s the one woman not only in MMA who also doesn’t owe me a damn thing, but that I owe immensely. I’m always trying to look at what I could do for her.”
Rousey said there was a lot she couldn’t offer Carano. Money didn’t make sense. But there was a different kind of support. Something she could offer, having been in her shoes: a goal.
“Her family owns Caesar’s Palace and Rebel Oil,” Rousey said. “There’s nothing I could really do for her except for when I was in a similar spot, when I was depressed and gave up on the world and inadvertently gave up on myself. What I needed was a goal and something to reignite my passion again. I always said that Gina is the one person I’d come back to fight for. I thought, ‘She needs this. She needs this fight.’ The more that I thought about it, I thought, ‘I need this. I need this fight.’”
Rousey, 39, hasn’t competed since December 2016. The near-decade-long layoff pales in comparison to the nearly 17-year layoff for Carano, 43. Despite her time away from fighting competition, Rousey says her mind is still sharp and will be her biggest tool come the May 16 fight at Intuit Dome in Inglewood, Calif.
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“I may not have as much collagen or cartilage as I had in the past,” Rousey said. “But I have more knowledge than I ever have. I feel like it’s my technique and my wittiness that always set me apart. It’s why whenever I get my hands on somebody, they never get up again. I’ve never been better in that way. We had to kind of change training around, instead of doing multiple trainings a day, I just do one marathon training a day, and I spend the rest of the day recovering. It’s really hard warming up twice in a day when you’ve had as many athletic careers as myself.”
This article originally appeared on MMA Junkie: Ronda Rousey reveals Gina Carano fight genesis stemmed from pregnancy
