Issue 108

December 2013

Rival coach Miesha Tate insists the world now knows the true Ronda Rousey after watching TUF 18, and expects huge support for their UFC title rematch at the end of the year.

FC’s golden girls Miesha Tate and Ronda Rousey have developed a rivalry redolent of those between Tito Ortiz and Ken Shamrock, or Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier in boxing. The two women are chalk and cheese and it’s obvious to anyone who’s seen them as coaches on the latest series of The Ultimate Fighter that they aren’t just playing up for the cameras – they really don’t like each other.

And the picture that’s been portrayed of Tate is that of a much tougher woman than Rousey might have bargained for ahead of their highly anticipated rematch at UFC 168 in December.

Yet the 27-year-old says she found MMA completely by accident and was very nearly put off from taking the sport up – for fear of being hit in the face. Thankfully MMA soon took over her world, and the former Strikeforce champion has risen to the top of the rapidly developing arm of women’s professional MMA.

 “When I first found mixed martial arts I had no desire to get punched in the face. I had a very typical female reaction,” she explains. “But sometimes things are just meant to be. Something falls in your lap and you’re just meant to do it. It was that way for me in MMA.”

Tate, a blend of European and native American Indian, grew up in Tacoma, Washington. A confessed tomboy, she started wrestling at the age of 15, the only girl in the boys’ high school team. “I did wrestling just because I didn’t want to play basketball. That’s the only reason,” she explains. “Most of my friends growing up were boys. I think I had one friend who was a girl.

“I was very outdoorsy and something of a tomboy. But I’ve always been very athletic. I went on to play soccer and run track and cross-country in middle school.”

Yet she admits she felt unfulfilled, until she took up wrestling – and loved it from day one. “I’d always thought wrestling was weird when growing up and I wasn’t drawn to it,” she says. “I did it because I had no other option – but it quickly became the thing I lived for. It made me feel alive.”

Moving on to college, there was desperation when Tate learned the wrestling program at Central Washington University had been cut. Fortuitously, though, it was where she found an MMA club – and Bryan Caraway, the UFC bantamweight, and her partner of seven years, who was running the team.

She recalls: “I was looking for something similar to wrestling to give me that kind of fulfillment. And a friend who did karate introduced me to the mats. I’d never even heard of the UFC, and she had to literally twist my arm to go to the club. That’s how much I didn’t want to go.

“But during that first visit, I think I learned a triangle choke, or something like that, and I was like, ‘This is really cool, I can see myself doing this.’ But I didn’t want to do any punching or get hit in the face. I was adamant about that.”

However, a few weeks later, she attended her first show in a high school gymnasium and admits she was ‘blown away.’ “I thought it was beautiful,” she recalls. “The amount of passion I saw, the courage, and the heart really inspired me. I wanted to do it. And at the end of the show the referee asked if there were any women in the audience interested in taking part on a fight card to be held three weeks later.”

Tate was up in a flash, registering her details, and the rest is history, as they say. Since that fateful day she has gone on to notch up a 13-4 professional record in MMA, which has earned her a coaching spot on TUF 18 alongside fierce rival and current UFC champion Rousey.

And she admits it has been a real eye-opening experience for her. She says: “It doesn’t matter how much you think you’re ready for it, it’s just different when you get there and all these cameras are in your face. There’s nothing that can prepare you for it.”

Despite feeling a little uneasy when she first appeared in front of the TUF cameras, Tate managed to hide it well. But one thing she couldn’t hide was the obvious dislike Tate and Rousey feel for each other.

It truly started two years ago when Caraway took to Twitter to call Rousey “an unintelligent bimbo” and said he would, “knock her teeth down her throat.” Both tweets were quickly taken down.

Tate explains: “Bryan wrote something he shouldn’t have. It was the night before my first fight with Ronda so emotions were running high. Bryan’s apologized since profusely, but it’s the one thing Ronda could possibly be offended by, and she’s taken it to a whole new level.”

Since that incident, Rousey has launched some withering attacks against Caraway, which have infuriated Tate. She says: “Ronda likes to pretend she knows something about our relationship, but in reality she doesn’t. It takes an incredibly strong couple to last seven years in the limelight.

“But for some reason, Ronda wants to tear us apart. She sees the strength we have together and she doesn’t want that in this next fight. She’s going to try to beat me any way she can.”

And Tate is convinced the general public will have now changed their view of Rousey too. “People aren’t stupid,” she explains. “They’ll buy into something for only so long. Ronda has been the cool girl but people will have seen the truth. They’ve seen why it’s been impossible for me to like her. She’s been incredibly rude to me, right from the beginning. Her true colors came out during TUF.

“She’s not just this cool awesome chick – she’s actually kind of a bitch and that’s been shown during show.” And on that note, who can’t wait for their next fight, in Las Vegas, on December 28th? Tate-Rousey is a rivalry that is set to run and run.

MIESHA'S FIRST FIGHT

Miesha Tate relates her very first MMA bout as a college amateur with relish, and in the smallest detail as though she has a photographic memory. She was fighting a woman called Liz Posner, a Muay Thai specialist with little wrestling experience.

Tate recalls: “I’d had a few weeks of training. I’d learned some jiu-jitsu – I had the wrestling background – and I’d done three weeks of stand-up training, so I was really looking forward to the fight. I wasn’t nervous at all.

“I was calm going into the first round and I took her down right away. It was the easiest takedown of my life. She’d never wrestled so I pretty much held her down the whole time. I literally forgot I could punch on the ground and tried to stay out of the submission holds she was trying to land – just lay and pray.”

But between rounds she was reminded by her cornermen, including her partner Bryan, that she could throw punches.

Tate continues: “In the second round, she put me in a Muay Thai clinch and started ripping knees into me and the second or third knee caught me right in the middle of my face. I just heard my nose go ‘crrrrunch,’ break, and then there was blood everywhere.

“She then took my back and was trying to choke me out, and I remember having this very serene moment – while on all fours – where I was taking everything in and watching a pool of my blood spreading on the canvas. I thought to myself, ‘What the hell just happened? This isn’t a wrestling match… I’m in a real fight!’ 

“And then I just got really p**sed and started bucking her off like crazy. She fell into my guard and I was literally reaching for the ceiling on my tiptoes and trying to pin her as hard as I could. And then I remember looking into her face just as the round ended.”

When Tate returned to her seat her cornermen called an end to the fight, despite her strong comeback at the end of round two.

She recalls: “They’d never had a girl fighter and I think their protective instincts kicked in, but I was really p**sed because I was ready to go. I didn’t want it to end because I’ve always been the kind of person who comes back stronger.”

Perhaps that’s also something we’ll find out about at the end of the year.