Netflix is expanding its live sports slate into mixed martial arts, announcing today that it will host a fight between Ronda Rousey and Gina Carano on May 16 at the Intuit Dome in Los Angeles. Tickets go on sale March 5.
The event marks the streaming giant’s first MMA broadcast and will be promoted by Most Valuable Promotions (MVP), the company founded by Jake Paul and Nakisa Bidarian that previously staged the Paul vs. Mike Tyson boxing match on the platform. The fight will be sanctioned under the Unified Rules of MMA and contested over five five-minute rounds with 4-ounce gloves inside a hexagon cage.
A matchup between the two had been discussed as far back as 2014, when both were among the most prominent figures in the sport. Those talks collapsed over a combination of timing, weight class considerations, and promotional disputes. The fight never materialized, and both women eventually moved on — Rousey to WWE and acting, Carano to a film and television career.
Rousey was the first American woman to win an Olympic medal in judo, earning bronze at the 2008 Beijing Games, before becoming the first female fighter signed by the UFC. She retired from MMA in 2016 and has since appeared in films including The Expendables 3 and Furious 7. Carano compiled a 7-1 record in MMA after coming up through Muay Thai, and parlayed her athletic profile into an acting career that included the lead role in Steven Soderbergh’s Haywire, as well as parts in Deadpool, Fast & Furious 6, and two seasons of The Mandalorian on Disney+.
Netflix has been steadily building out its live programming, and the MMA announcement follows the pattern of pairing high-profile names with event-style broadcasts. Whether the fight itself lives up to the decade-plus of buildup remains to be seen — but for fans who spent years wondering if it would ever happen, May 16 will at least provide an answer.