Miesha Tate retired recently after losing to Raquel Pennington. It’s a big deal because her presence in the women’s bantamweight division was greatly appreciated. Her departure will create a sizable crater and it’s one not so easily filled since she was one of the pioneers of getting mainstream acceptance for women’s fighting. Almost unanimously the fans supported her in her decision despite a collective sigh of disappointment.
One woman could not help but kick her when she was down after losing to Pennington at UFC 205. Beth Correia, notorious big mouth if we are being honest, said it was a sign of weakness. MMAFighting provided a translation of her recent Q & A in Brazil.
She showed she’s bipolar because when the UFC didn’t want her fighting for the belt, she wanted to retire. She lost to Raquel and got herself in a bad phase, lost to Amanda, and announced her retirement…When you’re not going the way you want and you run away from it, that shows weakness.
I’ve been through a lot of tough moments in the UFC and never wanted to retire. Quite the opposite. My fight against Ronda left a damage here, and I want to fight more, win more, to have experience, in order to have Rousey vs. Correia 2, maybe here in Sao Paulo, so it can be very different, and leave with my head up.
My history with Miesha Tate is very old. First, she called me out as an athlete on social media, and also said a lot of bad things about my personal life, demoralized me as an athlete, and I wanted to fight her, but our paths went different directions.
I wanted to fight her again, but at that moment she… I even said I’d fight her for free, in any card, in her backyard, really, because I still have the things she said about me stuck in my throat, especially about my loss to Ronda. She said some bad things, but in the end I saw that her attitude, announcing her retirement, that I’m way above her.
Tate isn’t fully retired because she will grapple with Jessica Eye on December 11th at Submission Underground.