Gina Joy Carano, born on April 16, 1982, is an American actress and former mixed martial artist whose career has spanned from the ring to the screen. Carano's journey from a Muay Thai fighter to a Hollywood action star is a testament to her versatility and determination.
From Kansas City to Hollywood, the women's MMA movement is moving on multiple fronts. In Los Angeles, Gina Carano's mixed martial arts background is continuing to fuel her transition into the film industry.
Gina Carano
Early Life and Muay Thai Career
Carano graduated from Trinity Christian High School in Las Vegas, where she led the girls' basketball team to a state title. Carano started her career in the sport of Muay Thai. Her then-boyfriend Kevin Ross, a pro Muay Thai fighter, got her involved. After achieving a Muay Thai record of 12-1-1, Carano received an offer from Jamie Levine to participate in the first-ever sanctioned female MMA bout in Nevada with World Extreme Fighting to fight Leiticia Pestovа, a bout Carano won in 38 seconds.
Mixed Martial Arts Career
Transitioning from Muay Thai, Carano made her mark in mixed martial arts (MMA). Carano faced Elaina Maxwell at Strikeforce: Triple Threat on December 8, 2006. She won the fight via unanimous decision. Carano proved critics wrong when she defeated Maxwell for the second time; the first victory coming in a Muay Thai bout. It was the first female fight in Strikeforce.
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She fought on the February 10, 2007 Showtime EliteXC card, defeating Julie Kedzie via unanimous decision in what was called the "Fight of the Night". It was the first televised female fight on Showtime. Her scheduled bout against Jan Finney at the EliteXC/K-1 Dynamite!! USA event on June 2, 2007 was canceled due to illness.
Carano fought on the September 15, 2007 Showtime EliteXC card, where she defeated Tonya Evinger via rear-naked choke for her first career win by submission. She impressed critics by holding her own on the ground before submitting Evinger late in the first round. Carano defeated former HOOKnSHOOT Champion Kaitlin Young at EliteXC: Primetime on May 31, 2008.
A day before the fight, Carano failed to make weight for her fight after weighing in at 144.5 pounds (65.5 kg). Leading up to her fight against Kelly Kobold, there was much controversy over whether Carano would make weight for the fight, as she had fought only once in the past year and had failed to make weight. Early on, Kobold was intent on pressing Carano in the clinch, while working for the takedown throughout the fight. Kobold managed a takedown in the second round, but the round ended before she could take meaningful advantage of it.
It was announced at Strikeforce: Lawler vs. Shields that Carano's fight against Cris Cyborg would take place on August 15, 2009, at Strikeforce: Carano vs. Cyborg. Strikeforce created their first Women's Championship for the bout. In November 2010, Strikeforce CEO Scott Coker stated he was hopeful that she would return in 2011.
Carano's return was formally announced in February 2011, and Strikeforce announced at its April 9, 2011, event in San Diego that Carano would make her return against Sarah D'Alelio on June 18, during the Overeem vs. Werdum Strikeforce event in Dallas. Critics asserted that the reason for the turnaround was Carano's marketability. However, the fight did not take place.
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In 2009, Carano, the daughter of former Dallas Cowboys quarterback Glenn Carano, would lose for the first and only time, getting stopped by Cris “Cyborg” in a Strikeforce bout in San Jose, but then Hollywood called, putting her fight career on hold.
Key MMA Fights
| Date | Event | Opponent | Result | Method |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| December 8, 2006 | Strikeforce: Triple Threat | Elaina Maxwell | Win | Unanimous Decision |
| February 10, 2007 | Showtime EliteXC | Julie Kedzie | Win | Unanimous Decision |
| September 15, 2007 | Showtime EliteXC | Tonya Evinger | Win | Submission (Rear-Naked Choke) |
| May 31, 2008 | EliteXC: Primetime | Kaitlin Young | Win | TKO (Doctor Stoppage) |
| August 15, 2009 | Strikeforce: Carano vs. Cyborg | Cris Cyborg | Loss | TKO (Punches) |
Transition to Acting
Carano starred in the 2005 film Ring Girls. Along with Lisa King, Carano served as a mentor to aspiring fighters in the 2007 Oxygen reality series Fight Girls. She appeared as "Crush" on the NBC show American Gladiators, in which she starred in the workout video of the show along with Monica Carlson (Jet), Jennifer Widerstrom (Phoenix), Michael O'Hearn (Titan), Tanoai Reed (Toa) and Don "Hollywood" Yates (Wolf). She appeared in Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 as Natasha, portraying the Soviet sniper/commando in various cut scenes.
Transitioning from the ring to the screen, Carano landed her first major role as the lead of the action film Haywire (2011), which was followed by appearances in Fast & Furious 6 (2013) and Deadpool (2016). She also portrayed Cara Dune in the first two seasons of the Disney+ Star Wars series The Mandalorian from 2019 to 2020.
Carano, who was discovered by Oscar-winning director Steven Soderbergh during a fight on CBS and starred in January's espionage-flavored thriller Haywire, is gearing up for a role in The Fast and Furious 6, whose last installment revitalized the franchise by grossing $600,000,000 internationally.
"We're still in negotiations and everything's going smoothly, but it really looks like this is going to happen," said Carano, who'll join an ensemble cast that includes Vin Diesel and Dwayne Johnson. "I'm geeked out." In preparation for Fast 6 and other action-flick opportunities piling up with her agent, the 30-year-old Carano has moved to Los Angeles and joined the 8711 stunt crew full-time.
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This same team choreographed Carano's intrinsic fight scenes in Haywire, which helped win her ActionFest's inaugural "Chick" Norris Best Female Action Star Award in April. "We're doing all sorts of martial arts that I wasn't able to practice when I was doing MMA," said Carano. "I'm really broadening my horizon as far as my skills go. Some days I'm doing tae kwon do, some days it's judo, some days it's boxing or muay Thai or swordplay or gymnastics. I'm getting my fix in without meaning to."
The 8711 team, which Carano said is "every 12-year-old boy's dream because you're kicking and jumping and flipping around," has become an outlet for the former Strikeforce contender to meld her fighting physicality into her roles.
After Fast 6, which shoots in London during the Summer Olympics, Carano plans to film In The Blood, an action thriller set in the Caribbean. In 2012, Carano was cast as the lead in an all-female ensemble action film, tentatively titled The ExpendaBelles, that would have been part of The Expendables film franchise. Carano appeared in Fast & Furious 6 (2013) as a member of Special Agent Luke Hobbs' (Dwayne Johnson) Diplomatic Security Service team. Several critics praised Carano's performance; Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times wrote, "Gina Carano is BIG fun to watch.
In July 2013, she and comic book creator Rob Liefeld announced they were working on a big-screen adaptation of Liefeld's Avengelyne in which Carano would star as the titular character. Carano appeared in the 2013-2014 Fox series Almost Human episode "Unbound", where she played the part of an XRN combat android named Danica. A week later, Carano announced she would be developing, producing, and starring in a new film project with conservative media company The Daily Wire. The film, White Knuckle, was to be about revenge by a survivor of an attempted murder by a serial killer. The film was scheduled to begin production in October 2021 in Tennessee, Utah, and Montana.
Films Haywire, Fast & Furious 6, and In the Blood followed for Carano, who drew positive reviews for her acting, but even as her film career was taking off, she didn’t rule out a return to the fight game, telling UFC.com before the release of Haywire in 2011, “I definitely do miss it and I haven’t necessarily retired yet. I’m not one of those people that are gonna retire and then come back, and retire and come back, it’s just not my style. So I’ll wait until I know if it’s right in my heart that I need to finally close that chapter in my life. But I haven’t been able to do that yet.”
Fans weren’t able to let her go either, and they clamored for her to come back to the fight game, even as fighters like Rousey and Miesha Tate made their name in the sport in her absence. Not that such a development bothered Carano, who said in 2011, “Ronda Rousey and Miesha Tate are phenomenal. I respect Miesha Tate because people didn’t expect her to win that Marloes Coenen fight, and I didn’t expect that to happen, so after she won that fight, she gained tons of respect from me. And she doesn’t appear to be one of the people that has been naturally gifted with the ability to do MMA, so you can tell that she worked extremely hard at everything and for everything that she’s gotten. I have complete respect for her. I also respect Ronda Rousey. Here we have an Olympic athlete coming into our sport and that’s exactly the type of athlete we want to come to women’s MMA, and she’s stirring things up and she’s going for it, and I completely love that about her. I think they’re keeping the sport interesting, and I support both of them a hundred percent.”
For her part, Rousey - never one to shy away from expressing herself - always respected Carano and what she had done for the sport. Even as Rousey began to get the mainstream media attention to rival what Carano had received, she didn’t make a hostile takeover of the “face of women’s MMA” title.
“I definitely don’t think I’ve pushed her aside,” said Rousey in 2011. “She’s the one coming out with a multi-million dollar movie (Haywire) in a couple months, and I’m not. (Laughs) But in the actual competition, I’m dealing with it (all the attention) fine. I expected it to be this way and I asked for it. This is what I wanted; I wanted not only to fight in women’s MMA, but to be the best at it and the most exciting at it. I’m just stoked at how things are going so far, and I really want to keep it going. When people watch the fights, I want the girls to steal the show. I want everyone to be like ‘hot damn, I want to see more of that.’ And I’m just trying my best to keep it going.”
She has, becoming a crossover star of epic proportions, and yeah, those multi-million dollar movies have followed for “Rowdy” Ronda as well, a consequence aided by the UFC’s decision to bring female fighters into the promotion in 2013. Rousey and her peers became a big hit in the Octagon, and while Carano continued to have success in Hollywood, she admitted in an interview with UFC magazine earlier this year that fighting in the Octagon was one goal that had eluded her. “It makes me beam with pride when I see all these women succeeding, but there’s also that kind of desire (to fight again), and I never got to make it to the big show,” she said. “I was right there and I had that conversation with Dana White, but I was fighting for Strikeforce, and I don’t know if I’m ever going to get to scratch that itch or not.”
She is going to, making the women’s MMA Superfight fans have clamored for one step closer to reality. Yes, Carano is five years removed from her last bout and Rousey looks unstoppable, but there’s more on the line here than just a payday. This is the biggest - and the most historic - women’s MMA fight to date. It’s a meeting of the two fighters that brought this sport to where it is today, and one of those matchups you don’t get to see too often; and if you do, one fighter is usually past his or her prime. Carano is 32, she was never in a series of drawn out wars, and she’s been in the gym since her bout with Cyborg. And not just to stay in shape, but to round out her game.
“If I’m working out or breaking a sweat, in my mind, I’m fighting,” she told me in February. “I love going in the gym and getting better and getting my first gi and learning so much more about jiu-jitsu and Muay Thai than I ever knew. So I feel much better all around.” But the kicker is that despite the polar opposites of Ronda’s scowl and Gina’s smile, what the two share is a competitive spirit that can only be satisfied by facing each other in a fight.
Rousey has referred to Carano as a hero of hers, and what better way to stamp her era in MMA than by beating that hero? As for Carano, if she left the sport behind for good after the Cyborg fight, there would always be questions in her head about what could have been. So her return shouldn’t be a surprise. She’s a fighter.
Carano said she hasn't been able to completely stifle her urges to return to MMA someday but understands she's broadening the appeal of female fighters in the mainstream with her new career. Responses like the one Invicta got are only the beginning, she said.
"There's no women like this in the world. I know the life and what these women go through everyday. They're an inspiration to me to keep going with what I'm doing right now," she said. "I'm just so much more fascinated with women's MMA than I'm with men's MMA right now and that says a lot. That's huge. I've been saying it for years that all they needed was a platform and now it's moving in that direction.
What Really Happened to Gina Carano?
Controversies and Firing from The Mandalorian
She was fired from the series in 2021, following several controversial political statements. In February 2024, Carano filed a lawsuit against Lucasfilm over her firing, alleging wrongful dismissal and sex discrimination. district judge Sherilyn Peace Garnett.
Recognition and Influence
Gina Carano v. Carano was profiled in a feature story for the ESPN series E:60. She was voted "Hottest Woman In America" by Big Biz Magazine in the Spring 2008 issue. On May 13, 2008, "Gina Carano" was the fastest-rising search on Google and third-most-searched person on Yahoo!, and ranked no. In May 2009, Carano was ranked no. 16 on Maxim's Hot 100 list.
"I fall in love with athletes and actors for their art and how they express it -- not necessarily if they're winning all of their fights or if they're getting all the best roles in the movies," said Carano. "I think a part of what makes the kick-fighting [part of MMA] exciting and in watching guys like Jon Jones is the creativity. That spark has really ignited again in my life in being creative and using your body in creative ways."