Is 2011 the Year that Gina Carano Makes Her Return to Strikeforce?

It has now been over a year and a half since her drubbing at the hands of Cris Cyborg Santos in August of 2009. Since then the biggest question that Strikeforce President has received has been "When will Gina Carano return?" He believed for some time that she would be back in six sided cage summer 2010. We're now in 2011 and the future of Gina Carano's combat sports career is up in the air. Scott Coker does believe this is the year she makes her return. He told Ariel Helwani the following

"From what I know of her, she is a competitor at heart; she's going to want to fight. She's not going to want to end her career the way it ended. So, I think she'll be back."

Carano hasn't competed since losing the Strikeforce 145-pound title fight to Cris Cyborg in August 2009. Since then, she has embarked on a movie career, with her first major motion picture, Haywire, directed by Steven Soderbergh and also starring Channing Tatum, Antonio Banderas and Ewan McGregor, expected to be released in theaters on April 22, 2011.

If she does make her return this year, it would after the release of the film. She will be doing PR and won't be in the gym. I'd expect the booking to be against Julia Budd, who defeated Carano in Kickboxing.