Ronda Rousey vs Gina Carano: Everything you need to know about the MMA superfight | Rules, undercard fights, time

Former UFC bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey has been coaxed back into the cage for a MMA featherweight showdown with Gina Carano. The fight, which takes place at the Intuit Dome in Inglewood, California on Saturday May 16, is the first professional MMA event promoted by Jake Paul’s Most Valuable Promotions (MVP).

Rules, weight, and fight format

The fight will take place at 145 pounds under the Unified Rules of MMA - five, five-minute rounds with with a one-minute rest period in-between rounds. Both competitors will wear four‑ounce light gloves for the bout which will be held in a hexagonal cage.

The ten-point must system will be used to determine the winner. Three judges will award 10 points to the winner of each round and nine or less points to the loser.

“The motivation is Ronda personally asked me,” Carano explained in the pre-fight press conference. “She was quite the charmer, she asked me politely, she inspired me. Other jobs came up during this but nothing was as important as this. To share this moment with her and to be the one that she would come back for... hey, we get to live once and this makes me feel super alive and I’m just so grateful - I didn’t know I needed this so bad”.

Rousey revealed that it was her new coach Ricky Lundell who paved the way for her return: “I never thought I’d come back - it didn’t cross my mind at all. I’d put a lot of walls around my heart when it came to martial arts, when I started teaching him it made me fall in love with martial arts again. It reminded me of the joy it gave me at the beginning”.

Rousey (12-2, 9 submissions, 3 KOs) starts out as the favorite with betting odds of -400 compared to +330 odds for Carano (7-1, 1 submission, 3 KOs).

Added to the card, Nate Diaz (22-13, 14 submissions, 4 KOs) will take on Mike “Platinum” Perry (14-8, 11 KOs) in a five-round welterweight bout, while Francis Ngannou (18–3, 4 submissions, 13 KOs) will face Brazil’s Philipe Lins (18–5, 4 submissions, 9 KOs). The event will be held at Intuit Dome in Inglewood, California on Saturday May 16 and aired exclusively on Netflix at no additional cost to subscribers.

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