Nate Diaz submitting Conor McGregor at UFC 196 was the most shocking moment of the night, without a doubt, but Miesha Tate choking out Holly Holm was a big surprise, as well. Tate had title chances before this fight with Holm but lost to Ronda Rousey in both of those instances.
Well, Tate's first title defense as bantamweight champion will be against Rousey, the same person who submitted her via armbar twice. The more recent of those two fights was two-and-a-half years ago, though, and Tate thinks that she has the advantage in her next fight despite the prior two losses to her next opponent.
Since losing to Rousey, Tate has won her last five fights and seems to have shown massive improvement. While Tate is improving, she feels that Rousey is going the opposite direction, especially when it comes to her mental state, as Tate called her "a broken woman."
"I don't know if she'll ever come back the same, but I have proven 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 and I don't know where Ronda's at with her mindset, but I have to wonder is she ever going to come back the same?" Tate said.
This all stems from how Rousey reacted after she lost to Holly Holm at UFC 193. Rousey appeared on Ellen after the loss and said that she had considered suicide because she felt she had nothing if she wasn't a champion anymore.
Almost immediately after losing to Holm, though, Rousey started positioning herself for another title shot. It was expected all along that Rousey would get to face the winner of the Tate vs. Holm fight, but many expected the winner to be Holm. Rousey herself said that she was rooting for Holm so that she could be the one to beat her, but that is not the way things unfolded.
Rousey will now have to settle for a third fight with Tate (Dana White has confirmed as much), and she will have to take the title away from a very confident fighter. White did not say when the fight would be, but he did say that it would likely be later this year. Some have speculated that the fight will be one of the main events at UFC 200, considering White is trying to make the car the biggest ever and Rousey always draws a crowd, but that is just speculation at this point. No matter when this fight goes dow,n it will be a must-watch for fans wanting to see if Tate is for real and if Rousey can recover from the shocking loss.
