Usually, when ‘ring rust’ is mentioned around a fighter, it’s in reference to a year – two at a push – away from competition.

In the case of mixed martial artists Gina Carano and Ronda Rousey, who meet at the Intuit Dome in Los Angeles on Saturday in Netflix’s first live MMA broadcast, the rust has been gathering for far longer.

UFC Hall of Famer, Rousey (12-2, 9 submissions, 3 KOs) last competed in MMA in 2016, when she was beaten by Amanda Nunes in 48 seconds. Her opponent, Carano (7-1, 1 submission, 3 KOs), a pioneer of women’s MMA, last fought in 2009 when she suffered her first professional MMA defeat to Cris Cyborg in a headline event that was broadcast by a major national cable network (Showtime), putting women’s MMA on the map for the first time.

Few doubt the commercial appeal of pitting two of the sport’s all-timers against each other, and organisers Most Valuable Promotions (MVP) will be thrilled at the interest in its first MMA card.

But given their time out of the sport, and their ages (Rousey is 39, Carano 44), is there any risk attached to the event?

Perhaps unsurprisingly, MVP has no concerns. “I think the opposite, right?” co-founder Nakisa Bidarian tells The Athletic. “They’re fresh. They have no injuries. They haven’t been through wars. There’s nothing holding them back from putting on a tremendous performance.”

Not everyone shares that optimism. “Ring rust is a real thing,” says former UFC fighter turned MMA coach, John Wood, on a video call from Las Vegas. “You don’t know what you’re gonna get ‘til we get actually in the cage in terms of how they feel.”

Wood, who owns Syndicate MMA, one of the most successful mixed martial arts gyms in the world, has skin in the game – he’s spent the last six months preparing Carano for her return to action, after he was approached by her husband, and former Muay Thai fighter and kickboxer, Kevin Ross about training her.

Did he have any concerns given the length of time Carano had been out of the sport, and her age?

“For sure,” says Wood. “I had to get her on the mat, had to see where she was at mentally and physically. Obviously she’s been out for a long time so the abuse of MMA wasn’t there, but the abuse of life – getting older and going through all the things she’s gone through – is still there.”

That’s the case for both fighters.

After Rousey stepped away from the UFC after her defeat to Nunes in 2016 she signed a full-time contract with World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) and continued her acting work by appearing in action film Mile 22. She also had two children.

In 2024, Rousey released her autobiography Our Fight, in which she was critical of the WWE culture and working environment and also said she hid “concussions and neurological injuries” for years during her run as UFC bantamweight champion. In the same year, she apologised for having reposted a video nine years earlier that spread conspiracy theories about the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, which killed 20 children and six staff members. She said it was “the single most regrettable decision of my life.”

Carano left fight sports for the acting world, making appearances in Fast and Furious 6 and Deadpool, among other films. In 2018, she was cast in The Mandalorian, Lucasfilm’s first live-action Star Wars television series, but was fired in 2021 for posting conspiracy theories and right-wing views, including an Instagram post that compared life as a Republican in the U.S. to being a Jew during the Holocaust.

Gina Carano has not fought since 2009 (Sarah Stier/Getty Images for Netflix)

In February 2024, she filed a lawsuit against Lucasfilm over her firing, alleging wrongful dismissal and sex discrimination. The suit was funded by Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of X, Tesla and SpaceX. The case was set to begin on September 25, 2025, but in August, Carano and Disney settled their dispute.

Carano was lost in the fog of that lawsuit when she got the phone call from UFC president Dana White in December 2024 asking if she would be interested in a comeback fight against Rousey, who was nine months pregnant at the time.

What drives a heavily pregnant woman to decide it’s time to fight again? It might sound like the punchline to a bad joke, but in Rousey’s case it was a “cascade of events”, starting with Mike Tyson’s return to boxing in a fight against Jake Paul at the age of 58.

“That fight got more views than any fight had ever received” Rousey tells The Athletic via video call. “It wasn’t nostalgia bait, it wasn’t a cash grab, it was something that people really wanted and were missing from combat sports.”

Not long afterwards, she saw Carano – the woman who paved the way for her to become one of UFC’s biggest stars – being interviewed, and an idea started to form.

“I was sitting in my office chair about to burst and I saw an interview with Gina. She had been cancelled a few years before and you could tell she was going through some tough times and had gained a really unhealthy amount of weight. I was looking at her and looking at myself and thinking, you know what? We should reclaim our bodily identities together.”

Rousey’s first call was to White. He was all-in on the idea (it later became clear the finances would not fit with the UFC’s model, leading Rousey and Carano to team up with Paul’s MVP) and put in the call to Carano, who saw it as an opportunity to focus on something positive amid her ongoing legal issues.

“When you’re in a lawsuit, you have that elephant in the room with you every day you wake up,” Carano tells The Athletic. “It’s all-consuming. To think about something else besides the last couple of years and besides this lawsuit, I was like, yes, this is something I want to focus on and embrace.”

Carano in her last fight against Cris Cyborg (left) in 2009 (Jon Kopaloff/Getty Images)

She had already lost around 20 pounds after finding out she was pre-diabetic, but still had a way to go before she would be in fighting shape. The pair agreed on the end of 2025 as a potential date.

While Carano’s training journey began with what Wood calls a “pre-camp camp, to get back in shape to start camp”, Rousey’s started with a visit to leading neurologist Dr Charles Bernick, on White’s suggestion. The former UFC champion had been prepared to return to the cage with the same mindset she’d taken into every fight previously.

“I’m just gonna have to win without getting touched,” she says. “That’s how I walked into every fight, because I’ve been dealing with these limitations my entire career.”

She says these include temporary vision loss, brain fog and lack of depth perception that would accompany strikes to the head. She had always attributed them to symptoms of concussion but Dr Bernick gave her an alternative explanation.

“He thinks that these head impacts and bright lights are actually setting off migraines. And what I am experiencing are not concussion symptoms but migraine aura (warning signs of an impending migraine attack).”

They started experimenting with different types of medication, mixing them with sparring sessions to gauge their effect on Rousey’s symptoms. Eventually, they found a preventative medication, approved by the California State Athletic Commission (CSAC), that works. Rousey says it has been life-changing.

“I’ve been playing a game of zero errors for so long, which is why I felt like I had to end my fights so quickly (9 of her 12 professional MMA victories finished in the first 70 seconds),” she says. “It’s really freeing in a way, but I still have to be careful – I can’t just walk out and get my bell rung. I have to go out there with the same level of intensity and try to finish this the soonest that I can.”

The CSAC follows Association of Ringside Physicians recommendations for regulating fighters over the age of 40, which include a magnetic resonance angiogram (MRA) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the brain, electrocardiogram (EKG, checking the heart for rhythm, rate, and structural abnormalities), cardiac testing, an exercise stress echocardiogram, neurocognitive testing, blood work, metabolic panel and ophthalmologic eye exam.

“It’s been a lot,” says Wood. “Every day she’s like, ‘They want to hear my heart. They want to look at this. They want to test my pee.’ They’ve been running her through the ringer and making sure that she’s healthy and ready to go.”

Asked what the biggest changes have been in their fight camps this time compared to the last time they fought, Rousey and Carano both reply (separately) with one word: recovery.

For Rousey, that looks like doing one “super-long marathon training session” in the morning as opposed to two a day, and spending the rest of the day working on recovery, which looks like using the sauna, cold plunge and hyperbaric oxygen chamber (this involves breathing pure oxygen in a pressurized chamber, increasing the amount of oxygen that reaches the body’s tissues and accelerating the recovery process).

“I have to almost put as much effort into recovery as I do into training now that I’m older,” says Rousey.

When Carano last trained like an athlete, few of these recovery protocols were in place for fighters. And it was only when she hit a wall during training for this fight that she realised how much she needed them. “I was breaking down,” she says, “hurting really bad. And then I started changing up the recovery and that was a game changer.”

She lists saunas, cold plunges and red light therapy as key but says a change in her approach to nutrition has also been crucial. For much of her weight-loss journey she avoided carbohydrates, believing them to be “the bad guy.”

But when she got back into training she realised how valuable they were to performance. “You actually can really utilize carbs right before your workout to have a better performance” she says. “I learned that a little bit late, so I suffered for the last year and a half. Now I’ve incorporated eating carbs before my workouts and it’s a game changer.”

Wood has trained fighters of all ages and says that the biggest difference in training those of a more advanced age (particularly over 40) is injuries. “After 40, things start going sideways without really even doing much,” he says. “You sneeze and you throw your back out; you fart, you can’t straighten your head for a week. It’s just one of those things.

“So a big part of this camp was making sure we do it right so no one gets injured. Getting to the fight after all these years is a big win in itself. But making sure that we’re healthy and able to put a product out there in Gina that’s actually capable of winning the fight, and I think that’s what we’ve done.”

Fortunately, the fighters have had time to build up to this fight. That means they’ve been able to take an extra day off when it was needed instead of pushing through to the point of injury. But as fight night approached, Wood says it was time to take the training wheels off and see what was left.

“These last two weeks, we said, ‘I want you to go as hard as you can with this, dude.’ I wanted her to feel like, here we go; this is a fight. Blow it all out. Go one round and just give me everything you got. I want you to throw up at the end of that round, just to get that feeling of, holy shit, this is how it feels. We’ve been testing and playing with different things mentally, physically, and she’s passed with flying colors. We’re ready for a fight.”

In answer to those questioning the quality of the action they might see on Saturday, Wood simply points to the condition of former heavyweight boxing champion Tyson when he fought Paul in 2025. “I can tell you, these ladies are in much better shape than that, hands down. These girls, honestly, they’re gonna shock a lot of people.”

Feeling ready physically is one thing. But how can you prepare for stepping back into violence? After so long away from physical combat, how do you ready the mind for staring into the eyes of someone who is there to hurt you?

It’s hard enough, says Wood, for those who do it regularly. “It is the biggest, most stressful thing that anyone in any sport, in any profession can do. You’re locked in a cage with another human, that wants to beat the s*** out of you, embarrass you in front of millions of people. And you have to be OK with it. Everybody feels the same thing. Everybody is scared s***less. It is how we deal with it.”

Ronda Rousey is determined to prove her competitive instincts are as sharp as ever (Sarah Stier/Getty Images for Netflix)

Rousey, for her part, has no fears on that score. “I’ve been in high-pressure situations my entire life,” she says. “Nothing will ever compare to the pressure of competing in an Olympic Games at the age of 17, when you’ve trained your entire life to try and make all that work pay off in one day.

“And since I stepped out of MMA, I’ve been in pro wrestling and headlining WrestleMania. I have so many reps doing those kinds of things.”

Carano points out that she has been through her own battles. “I feel like I’ve fought giants. The physical pain does not compare to the heartbreak of being hurt in your business or your career being taken from you.

“So I have a different perspective. I’m embracing the physical; I actually look forward to it. I’d rather take the physical pain than the other pain.”

ANAHEIM, Calif. — Pat Verbeek had to be cajoled into talking about his selection as a finalist for the Jim Gregory Award, handed out to the NHL’s general manager of the year. Call it a figurative arm-twisting.

Verbeek’s fifth season as the Anaheim Ducks’ decision-making boss was a resounding success, even though the breakthrough season he had painstakingly planned came to an end on Thursday night with a 5-1 Game 6 loss to the Vegas Golden Knights.

Instead of a Game 7 to see if their surprise playoff ride could turn into something magical, the Ducks will lick their wounds, savor this return to the postseason — after a lengthy, often painful rebuilding process — and turn their eyes toward a bigger future, as the Golden Knights try to take down the mighty Colorado Avalanche in the Western Conference final.

The Ducks, considered long shots to even make the playoffs this season, made a 21-point improvement in the regular season and made it deep into the second round, but the hyper-focused Verbeek won’t be raising a glass after this venture into the middle of May, following seven springs without playoff hockey.

“There’s no victory lap until you’re allowed to raise that silver cup,” he said this week. “That’s the victory lap.”

Contrary to what he says, this is a victory for the process Verbeek embarked on weeks into his GM tenure in 2022, when he traded pending unrestricted free agents Hampus Lindholm, Rickard Rakell, Josh Manson and Nic Deslauriers, mainly for assets that would only help the Ducks in the future.

It’s still debatable as to whether any of those assets will have a significant impact. The only one doing anything for the Ducks now is Drew Helleson, a Colorado second-round pick in 2019 who came over in the Manson trade and who has been a sometimes-scratched third-pairing defenseman. Otherwise, the results have mostly provided organizational depth help. But it is possible for the Ducks to see some fruits if Tristan Luneau (a 2022 second-round pick from the Rakell trade) graduates to the Anaheim blue line if and raw goalie prospect Damian Clara (2023 second-round pick from the Lindholm trade) ever becomes something.

The biggest and best development to come from that 2022 deadline purge was Verbeek’s willingess to plunge them into the depths of the NHL standings for the chance at huge future rewards. A last-place finish in 2022-23 didn’t land Anaheim the No. 1 pick in the draft, but it did result in top-line center Leo Carlsson coming to the Ducks at No. 2. Finishing near the bottom of the standings again the next season during Greg Cronin’s firm-handed debut as an NHL head coach got them Beckett Sennecke with the No. 3 pick.

Those two are foundational building blocks. As is Cutter Gauthier, the sniper who was the 2022 No. 5 pick for Philadelphia, whom Verbeek jumped on when the 22-year-old essentially forced the Flyers to trade him. This season, Gauthier became the Ducks’ first 40-goal scorer since Corey Perry. And they’ve got their No. 1 defenseman in Jackson LaCombe, a second-round Martin Madden draft special under the Bob Murray regime in 2019. LaCombe has been worth the wait for his development, and he took a star turn in this postseason and got national recognition.

That is a teardown done properly. The Ducks have high-ceiling youngsters blossoming into stars who should be the nucleus of future playoff teams. In his first season behind the Ducks’ bench, Joel Quenneville took notice of what Verbeek was trying to construct.

“I’m happy for him,” said Quenneville, whom Verbeek hired last May after ending Cronin’s two-year stint. “He’s done a heck of a job here. He built from the ground up. Brought some young kids along, brought some veteran guys to guide them and lead them.”

High draft picks alone don’t build a winning team. As he turned the roster over in the post-Ryan Getzlaf era, Verbeek’s dips into free agency have helped the Ducks at different stages. Until young forwards pushed them out of the lineup, Ryan Strome and Frank Vatrano were useful on the ice and in the dressing room. Alex Killorn and Radko Gudas became veteran leaders. Last summer’s signing of Mikael Granlund added more quality depth to the lineup.

Verbeek has hit on trades. Jacob Trouba and Chris Kreider were cast aside by the New York Rangers. The veterans were essentially reclamation projects. A fourth-round pick and spare-part defenseman Urho Vaakanainen brought Trouba to Anaheim. Kreider followed six months later, after he also waived his no-trade clause. One of the assets in the Manson trade — 2023 second-round pick Carey Terrance — brought back Kreider, a winger with 348 career goals.

The biggest addition, though, has been Quenneville. In February, he joined Scotty Bowman as the only coaches in NHL history to record 1,000 regular-season victories. The Ducks took criticism for hiring Quenneville, who had been out of the league for three years for his role in the Chicago Blackhawks’ “inadequate response” to allegations of sexual assault by a team video coach. But in hiring the three-time Stanley Cup winner, the Ducks earned credibility in terms of coaching acumen and became an attraction for players.

At 67, Quenneville doesn’t seem ready to stop any time soon.

“I’m fortunate to be here myself, to be around it,” he said. “There’s a lot of upcoming prospects in the organization as well. There’s a lot of positives coming out of this year. I think the patience that he had in the first three years paid some dividends here. Happy to be a part of it.”

What transpired this season — and in these playoffs — was memorable. Behind their fast-paced play and Quenneville’s openness to maximizing the speed and skill of his young stars, the Ducks got their fanbase excited again. Sellouts became more frequent. Honda Center became a noisy barn and not just because of the sound system or prompting from the in-house DJ. The seats being full for the national anthem at each of their home playoff games is a sight not often seen at Southern California sporting events.

The fans who stayed until the end of Thursday’s loudly saluted the Ducks for the roller-coaster ride this club took them on this season. That was a victory for Verbeek even if he insists this season isn’t a vindication for his method of running the franchise.

“The team has taken a big step from last year,” he said. “Overall, there’s been a lot of growth. You’re seeing some of that stuff. You try to anticipate it. You just never know when it’s going to happen. Like I said, everyone’s done their job and done a good job and so now we’ve gotten recognized for that.”

Now begins the most important part of Verbeek’s tenure: turning a playoff team into a Stanley Cup contender — and perhaps a champion.

With a clear preference not to negotiate extensions for his key restricted free agents during the season, Verbeek needs to follow the route he took in quickly locking up LaCombe on an eight-year, max-term contract last October as he deals with the upcoming contracts for Carlsson and Gauthier. Those do not need to drag on into training camp, as the talks did with Mason McTavish last fall or with since-traded Trevor Zegras and Jamie Drysdale before that.

More than $40 million is available under the salary-cap ceiling for 2026-27, as estimated by CapWages. Of course, that space can’t be burned up on just two players, and Verbeek must also consider RFA defensemen Pavel Mintyukov and Olen Zellweger. Decisions must be made about retaining potential UFA blueliners Trouba, Gudas and John Carlson. Gudas, their banged-up captain who didn’t play after Game 1 in the first round against Edmonton, might already be a cap casualty.

What shouldn’t be ruled out is a move like the the Ducks made 20 years ago, when they added Chris Pronger as the massive final piece to their Stanley Cup-winning team in 2007 following a run to the Western Conference final. This summer could see franchise-altering players such as Auston Matthews, Jason Robertson, Robert Thomas and even Brady Tkachuk being part of the offseason trade market.

What this can’t be for the Ducks is a one-off. It’s not lined up that way, and any step back would have the opposite effect on a fan base that had its faith and hope rewarded this season. This run needs to be the liftoff. The starting point.

“Yeah, I think we’ve done that,” said Troy Terry, the longest-serving member of the team. “This year we had stretches where I thought we were playing as good as anyone in the league. We had stretches where we would lose nine games in a row. It was just kind of one of those years. But I think we proved to our group in the regular season, we’re a team that can play at the top of this league. And I think that we’ve proven that in the playoffs already.

“So, it definitely does feel like the start of consistently, hopefully finding ourselves in these positions and looking to make runs and all that stuff. But as you guys know, I’ve learned in my career that you can’t take being in the playoffs for granted when this is my first time and it’s my ninth year. … Coming from me, you never know when you’ll be back, you know?”

Everything will change now. Expectations have risen. The feel-good story of this 2025-26 season for Ducks should be remembered fondly — and then promptly put behind them. Verbeek referred to his GM of the year finalist nod as an organizational award, and spread credit to his staff, his coaches in Anaheim and AHL San Diego, and the scouts in the pro and amateur realms.

It’s now time for them all to make the Ducks a true power.

“I view myself as a cog in the machine, and the machine can’t run unless all the cogs are all working together and doing a job,” Verbeek said. “You can’t do one without the other.”

It’s red. It comes with a collar. It boasts some of the largest stripes you’ve ever seen down a kit’s sleeves, and it will be one of the biggest-selling shirts of the 2026-27 season.

This Thursday saw Manchester United unveil their new home kit for the 2026-27 season. Produced by Adidas, the new shirt takes inspiration from United kits from the 1970s to create something that “feels both nostalgic and progressive”, according to official club documents.

And, for the first time in United history, the new home kit will be given an early debut, with United Women wearing it on Saturday against Chelsea in their final WSL fixture of the season, before Michael Carrick’s men don the new outfit on Sunday for their final home fixture against Nottingham Forest.

(Adidas/Manchester United)

Where the 2025-26 home kit was said to take inspiration from design elements around Old Trafford, the 2026-27 kit takes cues from the past, with Adidas citing the FA Cup-winning kit from the 1976-77 season as an influence on the new kit.

Back then, manager Tommy Docherty led a team featuring Martin Buchan, Gordon Hill, Stuart Pearson and Lou Macari to their first piece of silverware since their European Cup triumph in 1968.

United celebrate landing the FA Cup in May 1977 (Peter Robinson/EMPICS via Getty Images)

The new goalkeeper kit is an all-black affair, featuring a crew neck instead of a collar and camouflage detailing on the sleeves and shorts.

How goalkeeper Senne Lammens will look next season (Adidas/Manchester United)

The new shirt will be paired with United’s traditional combination of white shorts and black socks in domestic competition, and is on sale via the official club website and selected retailers, including the Old Trafford Megastore. The home kit will be available in replica or ‘authentic’ versions (the latter closer to what United players wear in games). Prices for the new kits start at £85 ($114) for adult shirts and £55 for children.

United’s away and third kits are expected to be released later this summer, with the club beginning their pre-season on July 18 with a game against Wrexham in Helsinki, Finland.

The Athletic’s review: more Nottingham Forest than Manchester United?

What goes into a decent United home kit? There are the obvious elements, like getting the correct shade of red, and there are the intangibles that fall into the ‘I know it when I see it’ category.

United’s new home effort comes with a particularly thick version of Adidas’ three stripes down the sleeves. It’s the boldest element in an otherwise clean and minimalist kit design, and one that particularly sticks out in the long-sleeve version of the kit.

Patrick Dorgu shows off the bold sleeves (Adidas/Manchester United)

Competition badges and a new sleeve sponsor (United’s partnership with DXC Technology ends in May 2026, one of several sponsorship deals the club are trying to replace), may break focus on the arresting sleeve design, but has the decision to go with a red collar, rather than the white of 1976-77, resulted in a kit that bears a few similarities to Nottingham Forest’s current home kit?

Could Nottingham Forest midfielder Elliot Anderson be tempted by another red collar? (Alex Pantling/Getty Images)

Perhaps the new design is a subtle ploy to further convince Elliot Anderson to make the move from Forest to Old Trafford. United aren’t the only European side to look to the past to inspire kits of the future, but Adidas has attempted to honour the 50-year anniversary of a well-remembered FA Cup-winning side, rather than continue to plough the 30-year nostalgia cycle as favoured by many other football teams and nations. Perhaps the club will return to the recognisable sleeve designs of 1997 next summer.

A price of £85 for the replica or up to £125 for a long-sleeve higher-spec players’ version again raises questions about the affordability of kits released every season, and why more consumers are turning to fake shirts from online retailers.

Silverware is a key ingredient in any beloved home kit. If Carrick is confirmed as United’s permanent manager in 2026-27 and leads this team to success, this kit may become a fan favourite.