Bethe Correia Rips ‘Weak’ Miesha Tate For Retirement
After losing for a second straight time against Raquel Pennington at Nov. 12’s UFC 205, former women’s bantamweight champion Miesha Tate announced her retirement. The announcement seemed to be well respected by the MMA community, but No. 9-ranked Bethe Correia didn’t feel that same way. Instead, the Brazilian blasted Tate for showing ‘weakness’:
“She showed she’s bipolar because when the UFC didn’t want her fighting for the belt, she wanted to retire. She lost to Raquel and got herself in a bad phase, lost to Amanda, and announced her retirement,” Correia said during a Q&A session in Brazil courtesy of MMA Fighting. “When you’re not going the way you want and you run away from it, that shows weakness.”
Correia has lost two of her last three bouts to date including a brutal knockout loss to Ronda Rousey at UFC 190, although she did bounce back with a victory over Jessica Eye this past September. The “Pitbull” claims that her losses have only motivated her to improve, but not to retire:
“I’ve been through a lot of tough moments in the UFC and never wanted to retire. Quite the opposite. My fight against Ronda left a damage here, and I want to fight more, win more, to have experience, in order to have Rousey vs. Correia 2, maybe here in Sao Paulo, so it can be very different, and leave with my head up.”
Aside from her comments about Tate’s retirement, Correia also detailed a history of bad blood between the two combatants:
“”My history with Miesha Tate is very old,” Correia said. “First, she called me out as an athlete on social media, and also said a lot of bad things about my personal life, demoralized me as an athlete, and I wanted to fight her, but our paths went different directions.
“I wanted to fight her again, but at that moment she… I even said I’d fight her for free, in any card, in her backyard, really, because I still have the things she said about me stuck in my throat, especially about my loss to Ronda. She said some bad things, but in the end I saw that her attitude, announcing her retirement, that I’m way above her.”
Do you agree with Correia’s comments or did Tate make the correct call?
