(This pose yielded very different results during the Robbie Lawler shoot.)

Gina Carano and Ariel Helwani continued their star-crossed romance in an interview for MMA Fanhouse, mixing friendly banter with actual questions about when the hell we’ll see Carano fight someone.  Long story short, it’s going to be in Strikeforce, eventually, but they’re still working out the details.  One would assume that the major detail in question is money.  Carano was working extremely cheap for Elite XC, and now she has the chance to hold Scott Coker over the coals and really stack that paper, son.  Only Carano claims – get this – that money is not a big deal to her:

Frankly, I am absolutely unmotivated by money. And I know that maybe people take that and don’t understand what that means, but I am just not. What I am interested in is people that have respect. Not only respect for me, but people who have respect for women in MMA. So, the better that I can do for myself and the better I represent myself – which I have to work on all of this, by the way – the better it is for the sport.

Now I’m no business mastermind, but if I were to write a book about how to negotiate a contract the first chapter would be entitled: “Don’t Publicly Claim That You Aren’t Interested In Being Paid Lots of Money.”  The second chapter would be called: "The Power of Blackmail," so now you know why I’m not writing that book. 

But even if you’re willing to believe that Carano is the kind of idealist who doesn’t want to get paid as much as she possibly can for doing a dangerous and difficult job that has a very limited window of opportunity, then you have to find a way to reconcile that Gina Carano with this Gina Carano:



Gina "Crush" Carano Destroys a 52-Year-Old Woman – Watch more Funny Videos

Sooooo, American Gladiators.  She did that for the love of beating up old Asian women?  That and respect, I guess.  Nothing makes people respect you quite like a shiny unitard.