Larry Brown Sports

Gina Carano is rumored to have been dating actor Henry Cavill for four months, and the couple went public for the first time on Thursday night. The former face of female MMA walked arm-in-arm with Cavill, who plays Superman in the upcoming movie “Man of Steel,” down the red carpet at the Critic’s Choice Movie Awards.

This is the same Carano that once described fighting as being similar to sex, so we hope Cavill is doing his best to stay safe in the bedroom. The 30-year-old Carano has made the transition from fighting to the film industry with roles in movies such as “Fast and Furious 6″ and “Haywire.” Cavill reportedly split from his long-term fiancee Ellen Whitaker back in August and began dating Carano shortly thereafter.

Superman and one of the best female fighters of our generation making it official? Talk about giving new meaning to the term power couple.

I’m not sure which is more surprising: that it’s 2012 and there will be a sixth movie in “The Fast and the Furious” series, or that Gina Carano is in talks to join the cast of the new film.

The Hollywood Reporter says Carano, an MMA fighter turned actress, will likely be a member of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s team in the movie, though the details of the plot are under wraps.

Carano starred in the 2011 action movie “Haywire,” and her performance helped her land a starring role in “In the Blood,” which is currently in pre-production. She’ll apparently begin filming that movie after she’s done with Fast 6, which is set for a May 24, 2013 release.

With her acting career blossoming, there’s no reason to expect Carano back in the cage. Unless she truly loves it, why would she want to get beat up for a living when she doesn’t have to? Thanks to Ronda Rousey’s emergence, women’s MMA is still doing fine even without Gina.

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If you were hoping to see Gina Carano back in the cage, it looks like you’ll have to keep waiting. The MMA fighter reportedly has signed on to star in her second action movie, this one called In the Blood.

Carano will play the wife of a man who disappears while the couple is vacationing in the Caribbean. Carano’s character recklessly pursues the people she believes are the kidnappers.

“This role will showcase not only Gina’s fighting skills, but also her acting abilities as her character struggles to reign in her violent past,” director John Stockwell says.

Carano starred in Haywire which opened in January. The movie has grossed about $17 million at the box office which is disappointing given its $23 million budget.

With Carano out of the fighting picture, women’s MMA needs the heavily-hyped Ronda Rousey-Meisha Tate fight to be a success to help keep the sport alive.

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Gina Carano is an MMA fighter and the star of the new action movie Haywire. She appeared on Conan to promote the flick and ended up in a discussion about how fighting is like sex.

“If you think about it, [sex] is a very real interaction between two human beings,” she explained. “It’s an energy, like you have an energy, and I have an energy, and it’s an energy that nobody else is going to share.”

Alright, I’m kind of with you on that, Gina.

Carano also says she got into MMA because of an ex-boyfriend who went to a gym to start changing his life. Five months later, she began fighting too. Oh yeah, and how can we leave out that the person at the gym said she was fat? I wonder what he would say now.

Fist pound to Guyism

Some stories you read about just make you shake your head, and the story of Cindy Dandois does just that. Dandois fought Jorina Baars on March 19th and won via second-round TKO. Following her victory, she was set to face starlet Gina Carano in June. This was supposed to be Carano’s first fight since she announced her return to the ring, but that ain’t happening after it was revealed that Dandois is three and a half months pregnant.

We first learned of the report from Steve Cofield at Cagewriter, and as shocking as the news is, Dandois must not have realized she was pregnant when she was fighting. According to Fighter Girls, female fighters must take pregnancy tests in order to be cleared to fight in the U.S. whereas in Europe, most of the time they only need to sign a declaration stating they are not pregnant. Hard to believe this could have slipped past someone, no pun intended, but it looks like it did.

Carano is still scheduled to fight on the June 18th Strikeforce card in Dallas though her opponent remains to-be-determined. The card is shaping up to be a good one; in addition to Carano, Shane Del Rosario will fight, and the other two Heavyweight Grand Prix fights will take place.

Here’s video of Dandois’ fight via Ariel Helwani at Versus:

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Gina Carano has made a change in trainers according to a report, and she has left Xtreme Couture in Las Vegas to join Greg Jackson MMA in Albuquerque. Sources at Five Knuckles, which published the report that I first read about at MMABay, did not give a reason for the move, but we have a feeling what inspired it if it’s true.

Greg Jackson is one of the hottest names in MMA thanks to the dominance of his students Georges St. Pierre, and most recently, Jon Bones Jones. Carano was beat up in her most recent fight in 2009 by Cyborg Santos (watch the video) and is looking to sharpen her game.

Carano announced in February she was returning to fighting after taking time off to pursue an acting career, but no date has been given regarding her next fight.

It was a huge night for Showtime and Strikeforce Saturday as their Heavyweight Grand Prix got off to a great, albeit surprising, start. The excitement was bolstered by an announcement made between fights that Gina Carano would be returning to the ring (an item revealed earlier in the evening by MMAFighting.com’s Ariel Helwani).

In an awkward interview where Carano was acting shyly, the woman called the female face of MMA said she owed it to herself to get back to fighting after taking a year and a half off. “I think I need to settle the score with myself really, I need to get back in there for me,” Carano said.

Gina’s most recent experience in the ring was a bludgeoning by 145-pound champion Cyborg Santos (video of that fight here). She spent some of her time off filming the movie Haywire that is due out in April, and it was recently revealed that she’s begun training again in Las Vegas.

In a voiceover that played during a highlight package of Carano, she said “I just want to walk away from it knowing I left it all there — I left it all in the cage.” It’s clear that she still has something left to prove inside the octagon. Her desire is certainly the fans’ gain.