At first there seems to be some mistake. Ronda Rousey is appearing in the new movie ENTOURAGE, yet the movie is a big-screen continuation of the popular HBO series of the same name. That ENTOURAGE [2015] is about an up-and-coming movie star named Vincent Chase (Adrian Grenier) and his posse of questionable characters from the 'hood. It is not about Rousey. How can Rowdy Ronda Rousey, just and justly named Most Dominant Athlete of a sport in the world, the UFC Women's Bantamweight Champion in a division arguably created just for her, and world-renowned Collector of Arms, be in a movie about an entourage and not be at its head, the object of devotion?

And such a small part, too. Rousey plays herself, but a version of herself who is the love interest of one of the entourage members (not the movie star himself), a character whose nickname is Turtle (Jerry Ferrara). His real name is Salvatore Assante, which has a certain ring to it, but still, everyone calls him Turtle.

Rousey's plot line, though small, is rather sweet: Boy meets girl, boy pisses girl off, boy offers to make it up to girl in the ring and gets his ass handed to him. Or, well, his arm, this being Rousey, but you get the picture. This small story, playing out against the background of million-dollar movies, crazy, gun-packing Texas financiers, and obscene numbers of the highly polished Hollywood accoutrements of choice (cars and women) comes as a small reminder that even in La-La Land there are still regular people who just want to cut through the bullshit and connect with each other.

That is why it's such a good part for Rousey. Her previous roles in EXPENDABLES 3 [2014] and FURIOUS 7 [2015] were both of larger-than-life characters not much different from comic book superheroes—or supervillains, in the case of FURIOUS 7. She was hired because she can fight.

For ENTOURAGE, you get the sense the rationale behind Rousey's casting was even more shallow—hey, Ronda's hot, let's hook her up with Turtle!—but she's more than a fighter. She wears dresses! She lets her hair down! She's someone who's friendly and fun but who can be hurt, and who is wary of the sycophants and opportunists crawling along the boulevards of LA like cockroaches. "Everyone's got an angle," she says, and you don't think she's acting. (But Turtle doesn't have an angle! And…moving on.)

A real person. In that short time, Rousey gets across the idea of herself as a real person.

For someone who gives the impression of cranking out MMA victories like the Octagon is an assembly line, this is a very powerful idea. Rousey has publicly stated she has no problem with being the bad guy in a fight; whatever the audience needs, wants, or the situation calls for, she's said. Yet global domination is harder to achieve when people are rooting against you.

Taking over the world is obviously Rousey's ultimate goal. After all, she's a fighter. It's what she does. It's who she is. When she's collected all the arms of all the women (and maybe, lord help us, some of the men) who dare go up against her, Rousey will still be fighting. Where else can she stop but total global domination?

And Rousey must have a larger goal in mind, because these two professions she's now pursuing—fighting, acting—are not kind, and especially not to women. The ACLU has recently filed a complaint with federal and California state authorities regarding gender discrimination in Hollywood (in this specific case, the dearth of directors) and Dana White's 2007 statement that he didn't want to see "two women beatin' on each other" is probably still an accurate description of the mindset of a majority of the population today. Success in one area is a miracle. Success in both: Let's just say world domination seems the easier path.

Rousey does have one role model, one cautionary tale, one woman who is still doggedly pursuing the path Rousey now seems determined to tread, and that woman is Gina Carano.

Carano's case is a little different; she is out of the fight game, concentrating only on movies, and she's one of the reasons Rousey has the opportunities she does. The Carano-Cyborg fight in 2009 was the first time a women's bout took top billing. She left MMA after that fight, and her first star turn in a movie came not much later, with HAYWIRE [2011], directed by Oscar-winner Steven Soderbergh.

Since that time, Carano has certainly kept working, with even another leading role in IN THE BLOOD [2014]. She paved the way for Rousey yet again with her role in FAST & FURIOUS 6 [2013] (Michelle Rodriguez always needs somebody to fight). Yet the sense is that Carano, too, is being hired because she can fight, and her roles, starting with the Soderberg film (in which she played a super-spy) and running at least until the upcoming DEADPOOL (where she's a mutant), have tended toward the comic book end of the action spectrum. This in spite of her looks, which are more conventionally beautiful than Rousey's. And Hollywood is nothing if not conventional.

Make no mistake. Rousey doesn't owe her career in MMA to Carano, or anyone. Carano opened some doors, then Rousey blew out the doorframes. But perhaps she is learning a bit from her colleague. Perhaps one of Carano's problems is that she's too conventional; a conventional beauty for conventional roles, and there's no doubt that in the Carano-Cyborg matchup Cyborg was the baddie. Cyborg got the boos.

So maybe—aside from the fact that Ronda Rousey couldn't be conventional if you put her in a nunnery—maybe she is learning a bit from her colleague. Maybe this little part in ENTOURAGE where the fighting is all in fun and she gets to go on dates and nobody dies (though Turtle ends up with his arm in a sling) is a wily, subtle attempt to show Hollywood that she's a human being. Not just a fighter, not just beautiful.

If that's the case, best of luck to her, and may she finally teach the film industry and the world in general something it's failed to note about women in, like, forever.