An already heated rivalry between Strikeforce headliners Miesha Tate and Ronda Rousey stepped up another notch yesterday as they butted heads during their pre-fight staredown after the weigh-ins, but that wasn’t the end of it.
Later, both fighters took to Twitter to give fans their version of the events that had unfolded.
“Weigh-ins got a little heated but we both weighed in at 134.5lbs, she looks like a little shrimp now lol anyways time 4 the #RouseyStomp!!” Tate wrote.
“Ronda thinks she’s tough she tries WAY to hard, such a phony person and she’ll probably get fined 4 trying to head butt me when I got in her face.”
Meanwhile, Rousey claimed it was Tate who had initiated the headbutt.
“For the record, she touched my forehead first…. Gotta go eat, I’m disappearing from the tweetverse till after the fight ;)”
And that should have been that until they meet later tonight on Showtime, but then Tate’s long-time boyfriend, Ultimate Fighter season 14 competitor Bryan Caraway, who Rousey had once claimed she could beat up, decided to get involved.
“Wow yur a lame bandwagon jumper and Ronda an unintelligent bimbo and if she wants to challenge a man I’ll knock her teeth dwn her throat the break her arm!” Caraway wrote in response to a fans Tweet.
Needless to say that didn’t go down too well and he immediately started to get a barrage of hate mail. Rather than attempt to diffuse the situation however, Caraway instead decided to dig a deeper hole for himself by getting into the finer details of why he believed men are superior athletes to women.
“Tired of her mouth an calling me out. She needs to know women dont belong competing against men,” he wrote to one fan, adding later, “all I was saying is women can’t compete with men and if she thinks she can she get Killed.”
Setting back the feminist movement several decades Tate then decided to stand by her man.
“When a woman calls a man out, she can deal with the consequences. Ronda called out @BryanCaraway & he would RUIN her, cry me a river if any1 else thinks different! She needs 2 learn her place.”
Later the penny appeared to finally drop for Caraway that this wasn’t the best PR move ever, and he attempted to hit reverse gear…sor of.
“I feel like most misunderstood what I meant earlier, Ronda called me out & I would never ever hurt a woman, but girls shouldn’t call out men.”
And that was that. Now (hopefully) the talking is over and the two ladies can settle their differences inside the Strikeforce cage, while Caraway can look forward to being the UFC’s latest pantomime villain.
