Former UFC woman’s bantamweight champion Miesha Tate has previously stated that she’d be open to a 140lb catchweight fight with Cris ‘Cyborg’ Justino, and now that she no longer has the belt there’s even more chance of it becoming a reality.
“When I was the champ, they told me that they would not … do a catchweight, so either she has to meet you at 135 or you have to not be the champion,” Tate told Ariel Helwani on this week’s edition of The MMA Hour. “So now that I’m not the champion, I technically could fight her at 140. I wouldn’t be against it. The thing is, I just feel like I have nothing to lose in that.”
Tate would certainly qualify as the best fighter ‘Cyborg’ would have faced in her 19 fight career, and she feels she could at least give the Brazilian star a run for her money.
“You’re fighting a girl who’s such a powerhouse and such a beast and just crushing girls. If I went in there and I beat her, or even gave her a solid run for her money, it says a lot. So I wouldn’t be opposed to doing it, but it’s not something that’s been discussed.”
Before that fight could even become a possibility, Tate has to fight the No.8 ranked Raquel Pennington on the main card of the star-studded UFC 205 event in New York City, and that’s not a match-up she intends to take lightly.
“Obviously at this point, now I have to focus on Raquel. I think she’s going to be a tough match-up. She’s a lot tougher than probably a lot of people are going to give her credit for. She’s hard to put away, she’s hard to finish, she’s going to be in it to win the whole time, so I know that I’m going to be in for a tough one.”
