The UFC women’s bantamweight division is in an interesting spot right now. They’ve got three legit champs, and each can defeat one other, but not both. It’s like some real life version of Rock, Paper, Scissors, and it could go on until someone manages to break the cycle. If it’s up to Miesha Tate, the cycle ends with her beating Ronda Rousey, who she thinks is a different person after her loss to Holly Holm.
“What about Ronda’s mentality? I think Ronda is beating herself up over this,” Tate told Jay Mohr on his Fox Sports podcast. “I mean, she previously said that she’s so emotional to the point where she’s considering crazy things. It’s like, this is a broken woman. I don’t know if she’ll ever come back the same.”
“But I have proven that I can come back from adversity and I do come back and I will come back. And there’s no one in this sport that can break me. I have the strongest mindset of anybody in there. I don’t know where Ronda is with her mindset, but I have to wonder. Is she ever going to come back the same?”
Miesha isn’t just relying on Ronda returning a shadow of her former self. She also feels her striking is where it needs to be to stop Rousey from implementing her patented judo throw to armbar combo that defeated her the first two times they fought.
“From that fight that I fought Ronda, I still had really wild, kind of flinging hooks,” she said. “I let Ronda come right into that clinch. [My punches were] so wide and open and nothing down in the middle.”
Miesha will have a chance to back up her words — UFC president Dana White has confirmed that Ronda will face her first for the belt Tate now holds. When that will be remains a mystery. When told of Tate’s win, Rousey allegedly told White, “Time to get back to work.” But does that mean we can expect a Tate-Rousey fight in July at UFC 200, or will Rousey stick to her original plan of returning in October or November?