Women’s 135 lb fighter Miesha “Takedown” Tate (11-2) won two unanimous decisions on one night last August to earn the next shot at the Strikeforce Women’s Welterweight title. She had been scheduled to meet the current champ Marloes Coenen on March 5 in the co-main event of the Strikeforce: Feijao vs. Henderson show, but a knee injury has put that on hold for now.
Tate has won five of her last six fights and is 10-1 in her last eleven bouts. That one loss was to former Women’s Welterweight champ Sarah Kaufman at the first Strikeforce Challengers event in May 2009. Since that time under the Strikeforce banner, Tate has gone on to defeat Zoila Frausto, the current Bellator 115 lbs champion, as well as Maiju Kujala and Hitomi Akano on the one night for the Strikeforce Women’s 135 lb tournament.
Speaking on MMAWeekly Radio last Wednesday night, Tate talked about her injury and her hopes that once she’s healthy, Strikeforce will give her the title shot she’s earned.
“They said four to six weeks if I do everything by the books. They said I should be able to go and get my physical therapy, and as long as I do that, I should be back up and running in that period of time…I pretty much begged Strikeforce, I was like ‘please, can we just push this fight back to the next card and I promise I’ll be ready,’ but it’s not fair to Marloes to have her training for this fight and then not have one, so I can understand that, but I was super bummed. I mean I earned a contention shot and I earned my shot at the title, so that was my understanding, that I wouldn’t be stripped of that. I’m assuming I would face the winner granted everything goes well.”
On Wednesday Strikeforce officially announced Liz “Girl-Rilla” Carmouche as Tate’s replacement for the upcoming March 5th event in Columbus, Ohio. Carmouche will now meet Coenen for the women’s Strikeforce title.