Miesha Tate’s going to get her third fight with Ronda Rousey after capturing the UFC Women’s Bantamweight Championship, but she thinks she’ll find a very different opponent than the one she met twice before.
“What about Ronda’s mentality?” Tate said in an interview with Jay Mohr this week (transcribed by MMAFighting.com). “I think Ronda is beating herself up over this. 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?
In addition to what she sees as a negative change in Rousey’s mindset, Tate also believes she’s made the right kind of improvements to beat the woman who has submitted her twice.
“I just saw how Ronda got demolished with clean striking [against Holm],” Tate said. “I think that I’ve improved so much and I’ve showed that in this fight with Holly.
“Look at how much my striking improved. From that fight that I fought Ronda, I still had really wild, kind of flinging hooks. I let Ronda come right into that clinch. [I was punching] so wide and open and nothing down in the middle.
Penick’s Analysis: It’s certainly possible that Rousey’s loss to Holm has irreversibly altered her mindset as a fighter. She had been a massively driven, extremely proud, and overly confident fighter, and a lot of that was taken away from her with how that loss went down in November. That said, fighting Tate again when she has two wins over her already is a different story than trying to avenge the loss, especially seeing how much Holm was made to look human herself on Saturday. Perhaps things will be different, but Tate should be preparing as if Rousey’s just as dangerous as she ever was.
[Photo (c) Jayne Kamin-Oncea via USA Today Sports]
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