Miesha Tate reintroduced herself to the UFC world last week, showing little rust after a five-year layoff following her retirement from the sport in 2016.
But five years later, Tate still had the look of a championship-caliber fighter, dominating in a third-round TKO victory over Marion Reneau and giving fans and potential future opponents a first look at the new Tate.
“I just feel like I’m so evolved because I’m in a different point in my life,” Tate said in a one-on-one interview with WFAN’s Danielle McCartan. “We can’t rewrite chapter one, but we can definitely make changes and make chapter two better.
“To come back and get a win after that, I never thought I would even want to fight again. I was retired and I meant it, but this past year, the pandemic made me reevaluate what’s important to me in life, and fighting kept coming back to the top of the list.”
Now that she is officially back, the attention turns to the next page of Tate’s new chapter. Nothing has been written yet, but if Tate has any say, she wants to take the octagon in the last venue she fought in before retiring in 2016: the World’s Most Famous Arena.
“I have yet to have any confirmation on any of this, this is just literally what I wish…I’d love to fight on the Madison Square Garden card in November,” Tate said. “I just feel like if things are meant to be…when you put that energy out into the world, sometimes you get it back in the most perfect ways. What a better continuation to the Tate 2.0 saga, if you will, to have me fighting at the same place in the same month five years ago, that’s where I retired in November 2016. To come back and fight in November 2021 at Madison Square Garden, I want to rewrite this story. I really feel like that is where I want to embrace my next chapter, or next section to chapter two.”
It was in Madison Square Garden where Tate announced her retirement in the center of the octagon immediately following a loss to Raquel Pennington on Nov. 12, 2016, and now, she hopes to use that same venue to declare herself officially back. The desire is there, and the next hurdle is finding a suitable opponent.
“We’ll see,” Tate said. “I have no idea who would be available or on the lineup…I don’t know…we’ll see. We’ll definitely have to take a look at what ladies and what shakes out over the next couple months.”
We've got two ways for you to check out Danielle McCartan's full interview with Miesha Tate below: on-demand audio or the Zoom video!
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