If all goes according to plan, Ronda Rousey’s return to MMA competition is one and done.
The UFC Hall of Famer, who took women’s combat sports to the mainstream with a tour de force championship run in the early 2010s, confirmed to The Post that her May 16 return to the cage against fellow pioneer Gina Carano is the end of the road.
“I promised my husband that I’m completely done, and we want to have more kids, and I really just can’t take any more detours,” Rousey, 39, said during an in-studio interview Wednesday afternoon, ahead of the evening’s press conference in midtown to promote Netflix’s first streamed MMA event.
That comes with the caveat that Rousey and Carano, the first big women’s star to emerge in the sport nearly 20 years ago, don’t “have one of those fights that demands a trilogy or something.” But as far as fresh foes, the headlining event for Most Valuable Promotions’ first foray into MMA will conversely be her last.
Rousey’s reign of terror at 135 pounds spanned championship reigns in Strikeforce and the UFC from 2012-15, winning eight consecutive championship fights. The former Olympic bronze medalist in judo ragdolled accomplished women of her time, winning six of those title fights in 70 seconds or less and as quickly as 14 seconds.
But after hitting a wall with consecutive losses to Holly Holm and Amanda Nunes — a boxing hall of famer and arguably the GOAT of women’s MMA, respectively — Rousey never felt the pull to take another fight but had never labeled her hiatus as a retirement.
Since the loss to Nunes to close out 2016, Rousey entered the realm of professional wrestling with WWE and dabbled in Hollywood cameos. Of late, though, her focus has been on her family, which includes two young daughters and two college-aged step-sons with husband Travis Browne, who had a successful UFC heavyweight run that overlapped her own time at the top.
Fighting again simply never appealed to her until now.
“I didn’t feel it at all,” Rousey said of any internal pull to get back into the cage. “Not one little bit. Actually my coach Ricky [Lundell], he asked me to help him get his black belt in judo, and that got me back on the mat again.
“I kind of put all these walls up because I felt like I could never fight again. I was dealing with some neurological issues, and just having to describe to somebody — because I never had to vocalize these kind of things — the system that I use, my philosophy of martial arts and things with somebody who really understands it at the highest level like I do, it really brought that joy back into it for me again.”
The inklings of an idea to fight again began to take hold, leading to the light bulb going off while she was nine months pregnant with her second daughter about 15 months ago that, yes, she would reach out to UFC CEO Dana White about a potential dream fight with Carano.
But Rousey has said the UFC ultimately balked at paying her a lofty sum she felt she deserved, leading her and Carano, 43, to take their business to MVP and its leadership, co-founders Jake Paul and Nakisa Bidarian, with the fight ultimately settling in as the main event on streaming giant Netflix emanating from Intuit Dome in Inglewood, Calif.
Rousey-Carano was announced first, but Francis Ngannou and Nate Diaz have helped fill out a star-studded undercard in separate bouts. Each man has grabbed headlines since each woman last competed — Rousey nearly 9 ½ years ago and Carano almost 17 years — yet their clash is the one MVP and Netflix deemed worthy of headlining an MVP MMA event that could lead to a more regular presence in the sport, should this one succeed.
It’s an honor Rousey does not take lightly, grabbing the top spotlight against other male luminaries of the sport, after all these years away.
“It really gives me so much more respect for the men on the card, to have that kind of humility to let us be the headliner and to still be a part of this,” Rousey said. “This idea came from a pregnant lady sitting on an office chair and having an idea … and I couldn’t be more proud to be aligned with these men that are legends of the sport, that are believing in what we believe in and are dreaming the same dream.
“And I just want to have the most incredible fight ever to make them proud to be a part of this card as well.”
