In case you’ve been living under a rock, Ronda Rousey and Miesha Tate have a Strikeforce title fight coming up in a little less than two weeks’ time. The tension between these two women is positively supercharged, and has led to some of the best pre-fight trash talk in MMA history. If the hype and media buildup surrounding their March 3 bout could be measured in monetary units, the United States national debt could be reduced to a zero balance, with a little spare change left over to place a wager on their fight.
Now, there is a new beef between these lovely ladies, and it all stems from comments made by Tate, regarding Rousey’s Olympic accolades.
In a recent TapouT Radio interview, Rousey spit hot fire and molten lava in Miesha’s direction, and gave a current chronicling of a variety of hot button topics.
Check out what “Rowdy” had to say after the jump.
By Crooklyn Special to CagePotato.com (Shamrock and Ortiz ain’t got nothin’ on these two in the hate department.)
In case you’ve been living under a rock, Ronda Rousey and Miesha Tate have a Strikeforce title fight coming up in a little less than two weeks’ time. The tension between these two women is positively supercharged, and has led to some of the best pre-fight trash talk in MMA history. If the hype and media build-up surrounding their March 3 bout could be measured in monetary units, the United States national debt could be reduced to a zero balance, with a little spare change left over to place a wager on their fight.
Now, there is a new beef between these lovely ladies, and it all stems from comments made by Tate, regarding Rousey’s Olympic accolades.
In a recent TapouT Radio interview, Rousey spit hot fire and molten lava in Miesha’s direction, and gave a current chronicling of a variety of hot button topics.
Here’s what “Rowdy” had to say about:
Her Weight
“I’m at 141.8 right now. I’m a professional, and I want to have a better cut than Miesha does, because I want to beat the girl into the ground. I know that in her mind, she thinks my weight cut is going to be a disadvantage to me, and I want her to know that my weight cut is going great, and she’s in for some big trouble. I want her to know that I’m fully hydrated and ready to roll, the day of the weigh-ins. I’m lifting the same amount of weight now, in late training, as I was when I was heavier, so I’m maintaining the same amount of strength, and I’m training at this lighter weight, so I’m much faster now. I think I’m going to be much more accustomed to being at a lighter weight than she is.”
The Tate Turnaround
“If you compare the original interview that we did with Ariel Helwani, with the round table we did with Scott Coker, she pretty much has abandoned every single stance that she had from the very beginning, and has adopted every point that I made. She kind of just knew that she was wrong, never admitted it, and slowly started to concede to every point that I made, with every interview over the last couple months. She doesn’t really have a solid personality or a solid stance. She’s just kind of like bland and blah, and doesn’t know how to stick to her guns or answer anything in a consistent way.”
(Hey, I keep tons of random trash in *my* car too! SOUL MATES. / Photo via @RondaRousey)
On March 3rd, red-hot women’s MMA prospect Ronda Rousey will drop to 135 pounds for the first time to challenge Miesha Tate for her Strikeforce women’s bantamweight title. Rousey’s pro MMA career isn’t even a year old yet, and she’s already facing the world’s top-ranked 135’er, a woman who holds victories over such big names as Marloes Coenen and Zoila Gurgel.
And according to oddsmakers, Miesha Tate is dead meat.
Props to MiddleEasy for alerting us to the current betting odds for next month’s Tate vs. Rousey showdown in Columbus, Ohio. Due to her string of armbar victories within the first minute of her fights, Ronda Rousey is as high as a -375 favorite in the matchup, with Tate slated as a +275 ‘dog. That, my friends, is insane.
(Hey, I keep tons of random trash in *my* car too! SOUL MATES. / Photo via @RondaRousey)
On March 3rd, red-hot women’s MMA prospect Ronda Rousey will drop to 135 pounds for the first time to challenge Miesha Tate for her Strikeforce women’s bantamweight title. Rousey’s pro MMA career isn’t even a year old yet, and she’s already facing the world’s top-ranked 135′er, a woman who holds victories over such big names as Marloes Coenen and Zoila Gurgel.
And according to oddsmakers, Miesha Tate is dead meat.
Props to MiddleEasy for alerting us to the current betting odds for next month’s Tate vs. Rousey showdown in Columbus, Ohio. Due to her string of armbar victories within the first minute of her fights, Ronda Rousey is as high as a -375 favorite in the matchup, with Tate slated as a +275 ‘dog. That, my friends, is insane.
Should Rousey be the favorite here at all? It’s hard to say. Miesha Tate represents such an extraordinary leap in competition level for Rousey, that it’s nearly impossible to predict how their fight will play out. This will be the match that determines if Ronda is overhyped or the real deal. And yet, the oddsmakers have already decided that this is Ronda’s fight to lose.
With a pairing this volatile, we wouldn’t actually recommend that you bet money on this fight. But if you’re a Miesha fan, you might want to jump on this line early.
Semi-related: Strikeforce: Tate vs. Rousey is scheduled to take place the same day as UFC on FX 2. For the last time, Zuffa — you own Strikeforce now, so you can stop trying to bury them with counter-programming.
Filed under: StrikeforceNews that Cristiane “Cyborg” Santos tested positive for steroids following her last Strikeforce 145-pound title defense provoked a wide range of responses last week, but shock wasn’t one of them. Some reacted with bitter disappo…
News that Cristiane “Cyborg” Santostested positive for steroids following her last Strikeforce 145-pound title defense provoked a wide range of responses last week, but shock wasn’t one of them. Some reacted with bitter disappointment, others with cynical detachment, but no one who’s ever so much as seen a picture of the Brazilian fighter can say that they haven’t at least considered the possibility that her biceps might have gotten that way via some not-so-natural processes.
For as long as she’s been in the spotlight, that’s kind of been Santos’ thing. She’s the woman with the muscles, the female fighter who looks every bit as terrifying as she fights. The positive steroid test just confirmed what most fans already suspected: there’s a reason you don’t see more women like “Cyborg” running around.
Maybe that’s what’s so disappointing about this whole story. It just seems so obvious. It reminds us once again that the MMA world isn’t some magical, mystical place. Instead, it’s just like the rest of the world. When you suspect someone is a cheater, you eventually find out that you were right. Then you wonder why you ever gave them the benefit of the doubt to begin with.
That’s the real problem for Santos here. When Tim Sylvia popped positive and explained that he just wanted to look good with his shirt off, you could believe him. You took one look at his soggy, pasty torso and thought, yeah, if I had to go topless on TV I might be tempted to do something about that too.
But because Santos has long been known as the heavily muscled, über-aggressive women’s champ, one failed drug test provides an all-too convenient explanation for her exceptionalism and, rightly or wrongly, taints everything she’s ever done. It makes it seem as if this is merely the first time she’s been caught, but far from the first time she’s ever used.
Not that she’s admitted to pumping herself up with stanozolol, of course. Instead she blamed it on an unnamed “dietary supplement” and copped to nothing more serious than a failure to fully investigate the banned substances list. If she were Roy Nelson, that explanation might fly. But Cyborg is Cyborg. When you look like she does, even the mere hint of guilt is more than enough to convict you in the court of public opinion.
Naturally, people will wonder what this means for the future of the women’s division. They wonder the same thing whenever anything interesting happens to a female fighter, and sometimes even when nothing happens at all. For now, Santos has been stripped of the title and the 145-pound division put on hold. And honestly? That’s probably a good thing.
For the past couple years, Santos wasn’t just the champ in that division — she was the division. How can you tell? For starters, it’s a division that might as well not exist while she’s suspended, as UFC president Dana White more or less admitted. Think about it: how many times have you watched a women’s 145-pound bout in Strikeforce that wasn’t a title fight? There aren’t enough women at that weight to have a real division. It’s just Santos beating up one fresh victim after another, many of whom have been cajoled into gaining weight just to get their faces smashed on TV.
The real action in the women’s division is at 135 pounds. Between Miesha Tate, Ronda Rousey, Sarah Kaufman, and Marloes Coenen (among others), there’s a wealth of existing talent with more coming up all the time. Santos might have had a certain circus appeal — again, probably for the very same reasons she now finds herself suspended — but the competition is in the 135-pound class, where the fighters sport credible physiques and the interest isn’t limited to one dominant champ.
White loves to brag that he never gave in to the siren’s song of freak show fights, even when his company was struggling. And while matching Santos up against one undersized opponent after another isn’t exactly a freak show, neither is it indicative of a genuine interest in women’s MMA. It’s a sideshow. It’s the scary lady with the muscles against whichever brave soul would take the fight. Now that that option has been eliminated, at least for the time being, White and his crew would be smart to move the spotlight further down the scale, where there’s an actual division taking shape.
Santos’ current predicament is still disappointing, even if it’s not surprising, but it doesn’t have to be a negative for MMA. If the absence of Santos means a bigger share of the pie for the women who are (hopefully) competing clean against opponents their own size, it might just be the best thing that could have happened.
And who knows, maybe Santos can use the forced vacation time to slim down and join her colleagues at a lower weight class. Tossing that “dietary supplement” in the trash might be a good way to start.
With their women’s Featherweight division in shambles, Strikeforce will look to further develop the scene at Bantamweight with a pairing of Sarah Kaufman and Alexis Davis. Kaufman formerly held Strikeforce’s 135lb strap–her only loss came in a title defense against Marloes Coenen back in October of 2010. Since that time she’s rattled off wins over Megumi Yabushita and Liz Carmouche. Davis is on a three-fight streak, picking up her last two wins over Julie Kedzie and Amanda Nunes under the Strikeforce banner. Given the caliber of competitors and their placement on this card, it’s safe to assume that the winner of this fight could go on to challenge the victor of the Tate-Rousey bout.
…and fillilng out nicely, we must say. (Pic: StandThemUp.org)
With their women’s Featherweight division in shambles, Strikeforce will look to further develop the scene at Bantamweight with a pairing of Sarah Kaufman and Alexis Davis. Kaufman formerly held Strikeforce’s 135lb strap–her only loss came in a title defense against Marloes Coenen back in October of 2010. Since that time she’s rattled off wins over Megumi Yabushita and Liz Carmouche. Davis is on a three-fight streak, picking up her last two wins over Julie Kedzie and Amanda Nunes under the Strikeforce banner. Given the caliber of competitors and their placement on this card, it’s safe to assume that the winner of this fight could go on to challenge the victor of the Tate-Rousey bout.
Another former Strikeforce champion, Josh Thomson, will square off against former title contender KJ Noons in a lightweight clash. This will be Thomson’s first bout in fifteen months; he last met Tatsuya Kawajir on the K1-Dynamite!! Power of Courage 2010 card in a fight he lost via decision. Noons recently picked up his first win in three fights with a decision victory over Billy Evangelista.
In a bout that will likely round out the main card of this event, noted scalephobePaul Daley will look to continue his winning ways against Kazuo Misaki. Though “Semtex” dropped his last two fights in the Strikeforce organization, he’s since picked up two decision wins overseas in Bamma. Misaki has similarly rebounded from a two-fight skid with a pair of TKO victories. This will be his first contest back in Strikeforce since a 2008 victory over Joe Riggs.
News that 