Ronda Rousey said that her upcoming fight with Gina Carano had originally been planned under the UFC banner before agreeing to headline MVP’s first MMA event in May. 

Rousey and Carano are both due to return to the sport they retired from, the former after her last fight in 2016 and the latter in 2009. But Rousey said during the press conference for the upcoming fight that they had originally intended to see it happen in UFC. Though ultimately that turned out not to be the case. 

“It’s become about changing the entire landscape of the sport and challenging the monolith that the UFC has become,” Rousey said. “I’m so grateful that Gina trusted me when it wasn’t going to work out with the UFC. I told her, I was like, ‘We can do this on our own. We don’t need them. We don’t need anyone.’ And she said, ‘I’m going to follow your lead. I’m going to trust you.’ And that’s what led us to MVP, and to Netflix, and to us sitting here to put on the most viewed MMA fight of all time.”

Carano said that she was first approached with the idea while Rousey was three months pregnant in December 2024, and Rousey added that while she knew they could promote the fight by themselves she approached Dana White with it first out of love and respect. 

“Originally we were going to do New Year’s, and it was going to be the last fight under the pay-per-view model, and he offered me the best pay-per-view structure ever and I was so grateful. But then Gina said she needed more time to get into the best shape possible and that she wanted me to fight the best version of herself. I think that was fate. It was meant to be,” she said. 

Rousey continued to say that, once the UFC had moved from pay-per-view to streaming through Paramount+, White had a fiduciary duty not to stage the best fights but to maximize shareholder value. And thus it just made sense for them to stage the match for themselves with the help of MVP. 

Ilia Topuria has said Islam Makhachev was using injury as an excuse to avoid fighting him on the UFC White House card in June. 

Topuria won the vacant Lightweight Championship last year after moving up divisions as the unbeaten Featherweight Champion, inheriting the title vacated by Makhachev as he himself moved up to become the Welterweight Champion, and thus setting up Topuria versus Makhachev as a would-be super fight. 

However, since Topuria and Justin Gaethje was made official for the White House event on June 14, the champion has gone on social media to say Makhachev had come up with another excuse to avoid fighting him. 

“Once again Islam comes up with an excuse,” he wrote. “This time it’s an injury. I always knew I would be a part of the White House event. Even when the UFC told me at one point that they wouldn’t count on me for the event, I knew it was part of the negotiation. When they finally told me I would be on the White House card, they mentioned Islam and I didn’t hesitate for a second to accept the fight.”

Topuria said that he woke up on the day the card was going to be announced, only to find out that Makhachev had gotten injured. That lines up with news emerging on Friday night, as Dana White confirmed that a fight had fallen through at the last minute. 

We both know who chickened out here 😉 you can cover your cowardice with nasty tweets, but don’t worry, one day you will get what you asked for! and your fat ass manager don’t have to ask for billions to fight me, we’ll do it for free. https://t.co/PTCJxG0gTv

— Makhachev Islam (@MAKHACHEVMMA) March 10, 2026

“We both know who chickened out here,” Makhachev wrote in response. “You can cover your cowardice with nasty tweets, but don’t worry, one day you will get what you asked for! And your fat a** manager don’t have to ask for billions to fight me, we’ll do it for free.”

WWE presented its first premium live event on ESPN’s new app, well ahead of schedule, in September with the first-ever Wrestlepalooza. The event didn’t turn out to be as big of a success as both WWE and ESPN presumably wanted, and in the days following, a review of the show, written by an ESPN combat sports reporter, made headlines due to the low grade given to the show overall. According to a new report, WWE objections caused ESPN to drop the letter grades from its show reviews.

According to POST Wrestling, multiple sources said that ESPN put a stop to the letter grades on its reviews of PLEs following objections by WWE. Dave Meltzer first reported that WWE had gotten the grades “killed” in last week’s edition of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter. Meltzer wrote that someone on WWE’s side of the deal confirmed it to him.

While it may seem trivial, POST noted that WWE reportedly influencing the editorial practices of its partner, ESPN, is the bigger issue. Reporter Andreas Hale gave Wrestlepalooza a “C” grade. In October, he gave Crown Jewel a “B.” In Hales’ following reviews of WWE PLEs, a letter grade has been missing from both the individual matches and the overall event itself. POST noted that Hale’s reviews of UFC events continue to use letter grades.

In yet another important note, POST wrote in its report that since Hale’s Wrestlepalooza review, ESPN’s various digital reporters have not published a new story with original comments from WWE talent. There have seemingly been no issues with talent appearing on the broadcast side for ESPN, however.

A source told POST that the move was ESPN’s alone. An official ESPN spokesperson declined to comment on the report, however. WWE also did not respond to a request for comment from the outlet.