The story of women’s MMA cannot be written without mentioning Gina Carano. The American actress and former mixed martial artist was the first woman, along with Cris Cyborg, to headline the first MMA card at Strikeforce in 2009 and is a pioneer of women’s MMA.

Even Ronda Rousey, known for her loud-mouth and willingness to call out other fighters, credited the pioneering work of Carano for popularizing women’s MMA and paving the way for many female fighters. However, Carano never fought in the UFC and revealed the reason in a recent interview on the ‘PBD Podcast’.

Gina Carano reveals how Dana White’s indiscretion led to her not joining the UFC

After promising that women would never fight in the UFC, Dana White changed his stance within a few years with Ronda Rousey soon becoming one of the most popular fighters3. In 2014, the UFC approached Gina Carano, who had quit the sport following her knockout loss to Cris Cyborg in their Strikeforce bout and had started a career in acting, for a fight with Rousey 2.

She told Patrick Bet-David on his podcast that while she had agreed to fight Rousey in a meeting with Dana White, she had asked the UFC boss to keep the news of the potential fight under wraps since she needed time to cut weight and assemble a team to prepare for the fight

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“I sat down with Dana and I was like well I wish you guys would have approached me five years ago you know like I’ve been waiting for this and so I was like, I just need some time and I need you to keep it quiet Dana you know keep it really quiet, so I can go and I didn’t have a gym I would have to go remerge myself into a gym,” she said.

But, Dana White started talking to the media the very next day and started publicly talking about signing her, which upset her very much. “So then Dana, and I love him now, he’s been amazing now. But then, you know, Dana, he was out there and he immediately started talking about it and it made my life very difficult,” she added. However, this was not the deal-breaker that caused her to decide against fighting Rousey, but something much more personal that made her reconsider.

Carano felt Dana White holding money over her head

In a previous interview with journalist Ariel Helwani on his ‘MMA Hour’ show, Gina Carano revealed that while she was upset at Dana White for going public with their talks despite being asked not to, the last straw was a text message that the UFC sent her, perhaps accidentally, that said: “This bi**h is effin’ us around.”

When Carano texted White back suggesting he sent the text to the wrong person, the Las Vegas resident doubled down in characteristic fashion and told her “I don’t think I did”. All of this, combined with the feeling that the UFC was allegedly trying to hold money over her head, really rubbed the Dallas native the wrong way and she decided against signing with the UFC. What do you think about the whole incident?

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