Miesha Tate took a victory over Jessica Eye in Saturday night’s UFC fight, but Tate says she’s upset she didn’t get to finish her.
“It felt good to drop her. Honestly, I’m mad I didn’t finish her, but it’s the best I’ve ever felt going three rounds. I did a new strength training regimen and I felt so strong and I was in such good shape for the fight. I was able to recover in between rounds and I felt awesome. A little disappointed to not get the finish. I wanted to show I had the power in my hands to knock anyone out. I think I proved that tonight. I dropped her a couple of times, and if I would’ve kept a little more space on the ground and kept punching her, I would’ve got the finish but my grappling nature kicked in. She’s a really tough girl, hats off to her,” Tate said.
Tate won the bout with a score of 30-27, but it was a hard-fought victory. Eye–who Tate called “dangerous” before the match–bloodied Tate pretty quickly and wasn’t about to go down easily after the build-up that preceded the fight. It’s the fourth consecutive win for Tate, but paramount to that is the chance she’ll get to fight Ronda Rousey once more. After having lost twice before to Rousey, overtaking Eye for a shot to redeem herself was important to Tate.
Although Rousey will have to win her upcoming August match against Bethe Correia in order to take on Tate a third time, UFC President Dana White seems to have no doubts that she’ll take the victory; he said after the Tate/Eye match that Miesha withstood a difficult fight because she had to.
“Miesha is such a durable human being; she will stand in front of you and take what you’ve got. She was getting picked apart in that first round and she keeps coming forward. She lands where she has to land, she does what she has to do to get the win and she’s worked her way back to Ronda Rousey,” White said.