Not everyone is buying into the Ronda Rousey vs. Gina Carano fight. And that includes controversial sports commentator Skip Bayless. The 76-year-old king of rage bait recently took to X, expressing his dismissal of the fight after reports revealed Rousey and Carano would undergo strict “neurological and concussion” medical tests before entering the cage on May 16.

“Not buying the need for protective ‘extensive testing’ for Rousey vs. Carano,” Bayless wrote on X. “Ronda at 39 hasn’t fought in [10] years. Gina, who’ll be 44, hasn’t competed since ’09. This will be more WWE than MMA.”

This, of course, didn’t sit well with Gina Carano’s trainer, John Wood, who responded to Bayless’ remarks while appearing in an interview with The Boys in the Back.

“People are going to criticize you and kick you, and try to put in their two cents,” Wood told The Boys in the Back. “And you got guys like Skip Bayless. [He is] very good at what he does, but it’s a lot of clickbait… When you put yourself in any fight out in the limelight, as big as this is going to be… You kind of have to be okay [with it].

“All the s—t, all the noise, that comes with every single fight. The world thrives on negativity. Negativity gets hits, gets clicks. It gets the attention of people. So be it, it is what it is.”

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Wood also revealed that had the Ronda Rousey fight not come to fruition, Gina Carano was ready to face someone else in her return to combat sports. The 43-year-old last fought back in August 2009, where she dropped a first-round knockout loss to Cris Cyborg. Similarly, 39-year-old Rousey’s last MMA fight was back in December 2016.

It’s this combination of age and ring rust that forced the California State Athletic Commission to take the safety precautions through testing. The commission usually requires additional testing for fighters over the age of 40, and those include blood work, neurocognitive testing, an MRA, an MRI of the brain, an EKG, and cardiac testing.

The pair will face each other at the Intuit Dome in Inglewood, California, which will broadcast live on Netflix—a first for the streaming giant in collaboration with Jake Paul’s Most Valuable Promotions. However, what’s interesting is that UFC could have been the one promoting it. 

Ronda Rousey reveals reaching out to UFC for the Gina Carano fight

Nearly a decade after leaving the promotion, Ronda Rousey revealed she personally reached out to the UFC in hopes of making a fight with Gina Carano happen.

“I reached out to Dana [White] and asked if he would be interested in it,” Rousey told ESPN. “It didn’t exactly work out with the UFC, but it led us to here today.

Rousey explained that the idea to face Carano had been building for over a year. 

“This has been in the making since I was pregnant,” she said. “It took a long time to get us here. We fought for this. We fought to fight each other.

She added that the matchup carries deep personal meaning. 

“I always said that Gina’s the one person that I would come back to fight for,” Rousey said. “The more I thought about it, I was like, I need this. I really need this fight.”

Clearly, the fighters involved are pushing the narrative that the fight’s not about making money. However, Paul, who is the co-owner of MVP, has the expertise in making fights no one wanted, which makes it difficult to overlook the idea that it’s yet another cash grab. What do you make of the fight?