Ronda Rousey is pushing back hard against questions about age as she prepares to face Gina Carano in a live-streamed MMA fight on Netflix on May 16 at the Intuit Dome in Inglewood, Calif.
The matchup will mark Rousey’s first fistfight in almost 10 years and Carano’s first in nearly 17 years. Rousey is 39, while Carano turned 44 on April 16, and their long layoffs have fueled scrutiny that Rousey is openly rejecting.
"I say that nobody's bringing up Jon Jones' age as a disqualifying factor or Francis Ngannou, you know?" Rousey said, later adding, "I don't hear these guys being asked about their age. It's not like my f*cking ovaries are fighting, so why are we even talking about this?"
Rousey insists the time away has only sharpened her. "And I'm actually more fresh. They've been fighting more often, and their bodies are more broken down, and I've actually been able to recover a lot over this time. What really set me apart as a fighter was my mastery of martial arts. It wasn't that I was so much bigger and stronger and more explosive than everybody, which I am very athletically gifted. But if anything, I've become more knowledgeable and more informed by the evolution of the sport. I'm more dangerous than I've ever been."
Rousey has publicly promised an all-action showdown with Carano, saying, "She's going to go for it, and I'm going to go for it, and we're just going to let it fly and show everybody the best fight that they've ever seen," and emphasizing, "Not best women's fight, the best MMA fight they have ever seen."
