Gina Carano’s coach, John Wood, believes his fighter’s competitive fire has not been satisfied by her 17-second loss to Ronda Rousey at MVP MMA 1, and says he leans toward her returning to the cage.
Carano returned to MMA competition for the first time since 2009 on Saturday and was submitted by Rousey’s armbar in the opening seconds of the main event at Intuit Dome in Inglewood, California. Wood told Home of Fight that the quick ending may have left Carano wanting more.
“I do not believe that that itch has been scratched yet for Gina, but we’ll see. There’s a lot of things already coming at her. I could tell you, behind the scenes, there’s a lot of activity already, so ultimately the decision is hers. It was never a need for money. This was a personal thing for her to come back and do this. Truthfully for me, she found the love of fighting again. And as a coach, I see somebody in the room who, she can still fight. And there’s a lot of people that she can still beat, I guarantee you. I think with the right matchups and the right, fair matchups, that we can have some fun out there. So we’ll see what she decides to do.”
Wood expressed his hope to see Carano fight again and explained why a second camp would be entirely different.
“I personally would like to see her do it again. I personally would like to see her take the work that we did and actually have another camp that would be focused on just fighting because all the hard work, the bullsh*t, the weight cut has been done. I would love to see her have another camp and do a fun fight. Do I think she’s going to do it? I would lean more to yes than no.”
Carano lost 100 pounds to make the fight happen and came in at 141.4 pounds at the official weigh-in before rehydrating to 152 on fight night.