Upcoming UFC bantamweight title challenger Miesha Tate is looking to avenge a loss to arch nemesis and divisional champ Ronda Rousey at UFC 168, and the secret is out that there is a ton of bad blood between these two fighters.
Rousey and Tate’s heated feud has been getting aired out in the public on season 18 of The Ultimate Fighter, where the two top-tier competitors are head coaching opposite one another.
“Cupcake” has been documenting her experiences on the show through a blog on Yahoo! Sports, with her most recent entry taking some heavy shots at the “Rowdy” one.
While I find it interesting that this was really the first time the producers showed Ronda flipping me off, I really think the viewers are getting to see the real Ronda this season—and it’s not pretty. She’s got a great skill set and as an athlete she’s awesome. But she’s not interested in building female MMA, she’s interested in building Ronda MMA and then leaving for movies or something else. She isn’t an MMA fan at heart. Shayna was the only fighter out of the 16 women who fought to get in the house that Ronda had heard of. The other girls, Ronda had no clue who they were, what they had done, where they had fought, nothing.
Last month, Rousey told MMA Junkie that she was worried about the way she was going to be portrayed on TUF, though Tate is arguing that is the type of person the former Olympic bronze medalist really is.
Rousey has her hands full leading up to the December 28 rematch with Tate, as she is filming roles in The Expendables 3 and Fast & Furious 7, something her old rival was also a bit critical of.
“No one would have turned down a Hollywood movie without giving it a lot of soul-searching, but surely Ronda could do phone interviews or at least tweet about TUF. They have cell phone reception in Europe, don’t they?” Tate wrote in her blog, criticizing Rousey for her lack of promotion for the reality show.
The 27-year-old Washington native also writes that she feels that she has the psychological edge heading into her title tilt with Rousey, an advantage she admits the champion had when they met in Strikeforce in March 2012.
Rousey won that bout, and the Strikeforce women’s bantamweight title, by first-round armbar, though the fight was competitive in the earlier moments of the opening frame.
Since then, Rousey has won two fights, including her UFC debut, with her patented first-round armbar – while Tate won a thriller over Julie Kedzie last August and lost a tough fight against Cat Zingano this April.
Tate dominated the first two rounds against Zingano before getting TKO’ed in the third round, a stoppage she adamantly disagreed with.
Despite losing the title eliminator fight, Tate got her rematch with Rousey after Zingano suffered a knee injury days before TUF filming began and Cupcake was happy to take her place, per USA Today.
Will Tate pull off a stunning upset at the UFC’s annual year-end pay-per-view, or will Rousey’s reign of dominance continue?
John Heinis is a Featured Columnist for Bleacher Report. He is also the MMA Editor for eDraft.com.
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The Ultimate Fighter returned for its seventh episode of the season. After last week’s battle between Jessamyn Duke and Raquel Pennington, it was time for the men to step back into the cage.