As reported by PWMania.com, Ronda Rousey and Gina Carano are set to face each other in a sanctioned featherweight fight on May 20th, headlining a card for Netflix.
The highly anticipated match was almost arranged several times in the past, but it is finally coming to fruition. It is an unprecedented matchup, as Rousey has been out of MMA for nearly 10 years, while Carano hasn’t fought in 17 years.
Rousey recently spoke with ESPN about various topics, including the efforts they both made to bring this bout to life.
Rousey said, “I mean, this has been in the making since I was pregnant, which is over a year ago. So it took a long time to to get us here, and I really can’t keep it — it’s such a long story, I can’t really keep it short for you. But we fought for this, and we fought to we fought to fight each other and there were a lot of obstacles along the way. I told her, ‘If I have to go out there and train you myself to fight me, I will.’ And we made it happen. We had to work together to overcome every obstacle to get here. And it’s really surreal, because it’s been like a secret for so long. I can’t believe I’m actually able to talk about it.”
On how her training camp will be different now at 39 years of age:
“Recovery [laughs] is a lot more important. And you know, I might not have as much collagen or cartilage as I have in the past, but I have more knowledge than than I ever have. And I really feel like it’s my technique and my wittiness inside the cage that always set me apart. It’s why whenever I get my hands on anybody, they never get up again. And I’ve never been better in that way. We had to kind of change training around where instead of doing multiple trainings a day, I just do one marathon training beginning of the day. And I spend the whole rest of the day doing recovery. Because it’s really hard warming up twice in a day when you’ve had as many athletic careers as myself.”
You can check out the complete podcast in the video below.
(H/T to 411Mania.com for transcribing the above quotes)
