Ronda Rousey And Miesha Tate Match Later This Year – Rousey Favored Over Tate
Ronda Rousey is still being favored over newly crowned UFC women’s bantamweight champion Miesha Tate. Earlier this month, Tate beat Holly Holm and claimed her women’s bantamweight belt, but there will not be an immediate rematch between Tate and Holm. Instead, UFC President Dana White has decided that Ronda Rousey will be going up against Tate next, after Miesha didn’t name a potential next opponent. So, MMA fans can expect a pretty exciting Ronda Rousey/Miesha Tate match!
Ronda “Rowdy” Rousey is currently a -475 favorite to win, while Tate remains the +350 underdog.
It is going to be Ronda Rousey’s first match since she lost to Holly Holm in November of 2015. The crushing defeat sparked a hurricane of online memes, asking to #PrayForRonda. The Rousey-Tate fight hasn’t even been officially announced and will probably take place later on this year. Miesha Tate herself said she would love to take on Ronda again, even though Rousey has beaten her in their two previous fights together.
“I am interested in it for sure. Obviously I was supposed to fight her when Holly fought her and beat her, so I was prepared and ready for that. I’ve been ready for that for a long time,” Miesha Tate told TMZ.
“But I also know Ronda isn’t slated to come back till November,” Miesha continued. “Now that I am the champion I have unlimited energy. I don’t even know what [Ronda] is thinking right now … it seems like her motivation to stick around was to have Travis Browne’s baby. So, I don’t know.”
In February, Ronda Rousey spoke with talk show host and comedian Ellen DeGeneres about the loss at UFC 193. Ronda revealed that she was truly devastated, feeling close to suicidal.
“I was down in the corner [of the medical room], and I was like, ‘What am I anymore if I’m not this?’ I was literally sitting there and thinking about killing myself,” Ronda Rousey said on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, describing her mood after she lost to Holly Holm at UFC 193 in November last year.
It was an incredibly dark moment in Rousey’s life and career. Ronda, feeling completely destroyed, was able to pull the inspiration to keep fighting from her boyfriend and fellow MMA fighter, Travis Browne.
“To be honest, I looked up and I saw my man Travis standing there and I looked up at him, and I was just like: ‘I need to have his babies. I need to stay alive.'”
Rousey Rousey and Miesha Tate actually have a long history together dating back over four years. Rousey won the Strikeforce bantamweight title in her match against Tate in March of 2012. They then fought for a second time, in a rematch at UFC 168 in December of 2013. Ronda Rousey, of course, won both fights by submission and following her win, the tension between the two seemed to grow and become more intense. So, their third match going down sometime in 2016 should be a very intense one, indeed.
Meanwhile, Ronda Rousey has been cast in the remake of Road House, which is currently being put on hold. Filming has been put on pause and it looks as if Rousey will not be making a return at UFC 200 on July 9 this summer in Las Vegas. UFC president Dana White says the MMA fighter has made a request for additional time off before her next fight gets booked. Ronda’s next fight was expected to be the rematch between herself and Holly Holm this summer. White clarified that the filming of Road House has been pushed back and it seemed possible that Rousey would be able to accomplish both (filming Road House and fighting Holm this summer), but it is more of a question of should she do both.
[Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images]
