LAS VEGAS – By the time she’d rolled into town to defend her women’s bantamweight title at UFC 196 against Miesha Tate, the strain of eight months of pretty much non-stop questions about Ronda Rousey was clearly evident on Holly Holm’s face.
Holm defeated Rousey to win the title in one of the biggest upsets in combat sports history. Even before her bout with Rousey was announced, Holm had fielded many questions about her. But from the time UFC president Dana White announced in August that Rousey would defend against Holm at UFC 193 in November, Holm’s life has been consumed by queries about Rousey.
When she was asked about Rousey following a public workout a few days ahead of her fight last week, she sighed.
Tate, who became the first challenger in UFC history to win by submission in the final round of a championship match when she choked Holm unconscious with a rear naked choke at UFC 196, is plenty used to it.
Tate is most likely going to make her first defense against her old rival, and she’s fine with it.
And while Tate is 0-2 against Rousey, she insists she’ll go into the third fight with a completely different mindset.
“Losses teach you the most about yourself if you’re the kind of fighter who can be honest with yourself,” Tate told Yahoo Sports. “You just say, ‘I’m down, but I’m not out. I will get back up and I will do better and I will learn from this.’ If you can look yourself in the mirror in the hardest of hard moments and admit the things that you really don’t want to admit to yourself, you can come back and be a much better fighter.
“That’s what I had to do. After that loss to Ronda [at UFC 168], I looked at myself with red eyes and tears coming down my face and I said, ‘You know, this loss is no one’s fault but yours. Either you can quit and walk away and feel sorry for yourself, or you can get your [expletive] together, get back up on the horse and do it bigger and do it better.’ I learned to believe in myself when no one else would.”
How Rousey will respond after losing for the first time is anyone’s guess. She didn’t attend the post-fight news conference after the loss to Holm, and when she released a statement 24 hours later, she failed to congratulate Holm.
When she arrived at Los Angeles International Airport from Melbourne, Australia, where the fight was held, she covered her face and raced past waiting photographers.
Later, she admitted to talk show host Ellen DeGeneres that she had thoughts of suicide.
Tate understands as well as any fighter how difficult it is to rebound from a crushing defeat, but she concedes she’s uncertain what to expect from Rousey.
“I’m really not sure where Ronda’s mind is right now,” Tate said.
Tate’s process of picking up the pieces was a pretty simple one. After she’d gotten through the grieving process, so to speak, she had an honest conversation with herself and her coaches and they determined her most glaring weakness: Her striking.
She’d been working with head coach Robert Follis and striking coach for only a brief time before she met Rousey at UFC 168.
They’ve now been together for going on three years and the improvements in her striking were evident.
“My striking was much more chaotic previously,” she said. “We’d only had eight weeks together prior to [UFC 168] and that’s not a lot of time for a coach and an athlete to get on the same page and understand terminology and movement and how to work together. It might have been poor timing of a transition before a big title fight.
“But it was necessary for me to make those coaching changes and ever since that loss, we’ve been undefeated together and I feel I’ve been growing. I’m not saying I out-struck Holly, but I was right there with her and it was kind of an example of the improvement I’ve made.”
Tate hasn’t had time to sit down with her management team to assess her future, but said that’s on the docket shortly.
Despite the differences she has with Rousey – the two agree on little and there is an intense dislike – she admits much respect for Rousey’s talent. That said, she’s also confident of her ability to turn things around.
Both Tate and Holm’s names are going to be inextricably linked with Rousey’s, regardless of what happens going forward in their careers.
Rousey was the supernova who made women’s MMA in the UFC possible, and the three women remain so closely linked.
Tate, though, feels she’s forged her own identity.
“I want my own name and my own reputation, which I feel I have now as the champion,” she said. “People are still very focused on Ronda because Ronda is an amazing athlete and she is an amazing fighter and she was a phenomenal champion from a performance standpoint. Absolutely. People want to know what’s going to happen when she comes back, and they’re very invested in that.
“I’m happy Ronda’s been a part of my career, because we’ve both been able to push each other’s careers to the next level. I think our rivalry is something that will never be forgotten. It’s always going to be in the history books and when the story is written about women’s mixed martial arts hitting the mainstream level, Miesha and Ronda, our rivalry, is going to be a big part of that.”
Still, she has more to accomplish to allow herself to escape the enormous shadow Rousey casts. Rousey is more than a fighter; she’s a celebrity who appears in movies, hosts television shows, is a swimsuit model and gets major commercial endorsements.
So she blots out a lot about a lot of fighters because of all she does.
Tate, though, isn’t content with where the story is now.
“I’m thankful for being a part of that, absolutely, but I don’t want to stop there,” Tate said. “I don’t want it to be ‘Ronda and Miesha.’ I want to go on and do things and have my own set of accomplishments that stand on their own. And that’s the next phase.”
