On Monday, Strikeforce Women’s Bantamweight champ Miesha ‘Takedown’ Tate (12-2), and current undefeated women’s featherweight fighter Ronday ‘Rowdy’ Rousey (4-0), were both guests on The MMA Hour to talk about the women’s division, and most importantly the next No. 1 contender.
Rousey is quickly rising in popularity among fans, having finished all four of her pro-bouts by armbar submission in the first minute of each fight. After her recent win, ‘Rowdy’ has come out asking for a title shot against Tate despite having never fought at 135 lbs.
She tells The MMA Hour that it’s the fight that will sell tickets and doesn’t necessarily have to make sense in the rankings.
“I really feel 100 percent that a fight between her and me needs to happen,” Rousey said. “It’ll be great for women’s MMA. It’ll be the first highly anticipated fight in women’s MMA for a long time … We need to capitalize on the opportunity while we still have it. I don’t want to risk her losing the title and us not being able to fight each other for the title.”
Meanwhile Tate feels quite differently about the matchup, saying Rousey has to pay her dues first before she should be given a shot at her title. ‘Takedown’ has already been promised another opponent, former champ Sarah Kaufman who defeated Tate by decision back in May 2009.
“What happens when she gets a failed arm bar and someone ends up on top pounding her face in?” she said. “Is she going to tap out or quit? We don’t know. We haven’t seen that yet. I think it’s kind of silly to put her in with me because that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to take it to her. A lot of people are underestimating me. That’s fine. That always seems to be the case. Make no mistake, if Ronda is my next fight, I’m going to come in with a vengeance you’ve never seen before, because to be quite honest, it’s probably going to piss me off…”
“It would be way smarter for the longevity of the division to work her way up,” she said. “If she runs through people — which I don’t think she will — then I’ll be happy to beat her face in. She wants to be pretty? She won’t be as pretty after our fight.”
Do check out the entire article from the live interview with both women on the set. I’ll try to post the video once it becomes available. When these two meet, this is going to be one hell of a cat fight.