Women’s mixed martial arts has come a long way in the past five years, largely off the back of UFC superstar Ronda Rousey. Before she came along, the UFC didn’t have women’s divisions. In fact, UFC president Dana White famously said women would never fight in the promotion. But after seeing Ronda Rousey fight and the reaction she was getting from the world at large, White changed his mind and now she’s one of the biggest draws in the sport.
But before Ronda Rousey was the face of women’s MMA, that was Gina Carano’s job title. And if it wasn’t for Gina fighting on Showtime and CBS, Ronda Rousey would never have gotten the idea to try fighting herself.
“I couldn’t help but think of doing MMA one day becasue I saw Gina Carano and Julie Kedzie fight, and I didn’t even know women fought in MMA. And it just planted that seed in my mind,” Rousey revealed in an excerpt from the upcoming documentary The Hurt Business. “And my mom says all the time you can’t un-have a thought. And I tried to push it out of my mind, cuz I watched them fight and watched how much respect and interest it got from everyone, and I was envious in a way.”
“I knew that I could beat those girls, but no one in the room had any reason to believe me. And I started being frustrated by the fact that I know that I was the best female fighter in the world and no one believed me.”
That fight between Carano and Kedzie went down in 2007. In 2010, Rousey would step into the cage for her first amateur fight. She went pro in 2011 and by 2013 she had arrived in the UFC, bringing the rest of the women with her.
Interestingly enough, Ronda Rousey and Gina Carano almost ended up fighting in 2014, but the UFC was never able to come to terms with Carano. Instead, Gina decided to concentrate on kicking ass on the big screen, most recently playing villain Angel Dust in the smash hit superhero movie Deadpool. And it turns out Carano isn’t just a combat sports role model. Ronda has also said she hopes to follow the path Gina paved to Hollywood as well.