Gina Carano is Back, Just Not Back in MMA

Last weekend, Cyborg was handed a year’s suspension following a positive steroids test in the wake of her December 17th ass-kicking of Hiroko Yamanaka. In a post on Saturday night, I said that Cyborg had basically killed the sport. Obviously, an entire sport did not die with Cyborg’s positive test, but if you need me, I’m going to be out on this limb saying this isn’t great for the sport.

With Zuffa purchasing Strikeforce, Carano has become a fixture at UFC events. She showed up at UFC 141 a couple weeks ago to shill Haywire and wear a hat and dance. MMA Fighting’s Ariel Helwani caught up with Carano that night to interview her for the first time since before the Cyborg fight. Carano bit her lip and avoided all the questions that people had been wanting to ask about her MMA career.

Carano has always been that way. She has seemed to keep a level of privacy even as her fame grew. She’s been far from a recluse. In 2008, she appeared on the American Gladiators remake as Crush. In 2009, Carano was #16 on Maxim’s Hot 100 list. Later in the year she was featured on the cover of ESPN: The Magazine’s Body Issue. For the last year, she’s been filming Haywire. Now she’s out doing the rounds to promote the film. Including a new photo shoot with GQ.

What happens next? The odds of Carano’s Haywire character turning into the female Jason Bourne are slim, but early reviews have been positive despite the fact that the movie has already been pushed back to the cinematic wasteland of January. (I’m cautiously optimistic about Haywire, but the quality of a movie seldom has anything to do with a strong opening weekend. A solid opening could mean more work for the unproven actress. A bad opening could mean a return to her MMA roots. Or maybe she just walks away from the spotlight. The only thing that’s for sure is that Gina Carano can do whatever she wants. But what the hell does she actually want to do?

[Getty, GQ, MMA Fighting]