The old expression “time heals all wounds” doesn’t seem to apply to Miesha Tate and Ronda Rousey.
Miesha Tate won’t go as far as saying she still hates Ronda Rousey, but there’s definitely some heat there. Tate, who retired from the Octagon following a UFC 205 loss to Raquel Pennington, had an extremely long and drawn-out rivalry with Rousey that spanned two MMA promotions and two fights, both of which Rousey came out on top of.
Despite that all taking place years ago though, Tate said in an MMA Hour interview that she wouldn’t be cordial with Rousey if she saw her on the street today:
“I wouldn’t say hi to her and I doubt that she would say hi to me either. I think that we would just be like ‘oh’ and walk away from each other, like, awkward.”
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“I don’t hate Ronda, I really don’t,” Tate said. “I don’t like her, but hate is such a strong word. I don’t like her because we don’t see a lot eye to eye, and we’ve had some bad conversations and I feel like she’s been very disrespectful. But at the end of the day, I’m not the person to harness hate toward someone, so, out of respect to her, I’d be like ‘hey,’ you know? There have been a couple occasions before things got way more heated where we were sort of okay, like ‘hi, bye’ okay, and I was fine with that, you know? But I think it’s more her terms than mine, which is fine.”
The former UFC women’s bantamweight champion also discussed her retirement, stating that she’s happy where she’s at.
“I don’t like I need to be fighting in there anymore. You know, 10 years was enough to fulfill that for me. I felt like I did everything, and accomplished a lot even though there more I would have liked to do, but there’s always going to be more. So really it’s just transitions to other things in my life that I want to do and what I want to accomplish. And it’s so nice not having the looming pressure of a fight overhead. It’s a lot of stress, it’s a lot of work, and a lot of sacrifice.”