Miesha Tate says she doesn’t hold a grudge against Ronda Rousey these days and wishes her former foe was simply capable of doing the same, but she doesn’t see it.
Rousey, who became a mainstream star as the first UFC women’s bantamweight champion when females broke into the promotion in 2013, has spoken candidly about the downfall of her MMA career in her most recent interviews. It began with Rousey opening up about her history of concussions as she admitted it was a major factor in her retiring from MMA. Rousey said she was concussed when she stepped into the cage for her November 2015 fight with Holly Holm, which Rousey lost in stunning fashion by head-kick knockout. Those remarks weren’t received well by critics who considered them an excuse that took away from Holm’s performance.
Rousey, who was inducted into the UFC Hall of Fame in 2018, also said recently that she believes Joe Rogan and MMA media are “a bunch of a**holes” for turning on her after her knockout losses to Holm and Amanda Nunes 13 months later.
For Tate, Rousey’s remarks are telling.
“I personally don’t have the animosity that I had for Ronda at one point,” Tate said on Sirius XM’s “MMA Today” show with Ryan McKinnell. “The disdain, the frustration, I’ve been able to work through those things and see my fault in it and try to be a better person. I wish that I could say that I saw the same growth from Ronda, but it doesn’t seem that way. It certainly seems that she’s holding onto the resentment, the frustration and the anger, and allowing it to dictate her next moves.
“I do not think the MMA community, in large part, ever turned their back on Ronda.”
Rousey was a media darling during her heyday, which included a bitter rivalry with Tate. Rousey first submitted Tate in Strikeforce in March 2012 and then again in December 2013 at UFC 168. That fight capped off a heated season of “The Ultimate Fighter” with Tate and Rousey as opposing coaches.
Rousey left no doubt about how much she hated Tate back then as she focused so much on the negative. To this day, Tate still believes focusing too much on the negative is Rousey’s biggest issue.
“She forgot that there were hundreds of thousands of little girls around the world that were still idolizing her,” Tate said. “They didn’t care if she won or lost. They thought she was amazing either way. She doesn’t seem to have come to the point where I would like to see her be yet. I think she’s still really hurt by it, but I think she’s very focused on self instead of self-growth. I think she’s still focused on, ‘Well, this is what happened to me, all these people turned on me, I had all these concussions happen to me, and nobody was thinking about me.’ It’s like, well, hang on, it’s not quite like that.
“People beat you down a bit. It comes with fame. Nobody gets away unscathed in life, much less if your life is put on a magnitude scale where everybody gets to witness your rise like they witness your fall. But it happens to every champion. This is not a Ronda Rousey vs. the world situation. It’s when you are great, sometimes people just want to see greatness fall.”
