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Former UFC women’s bantamweight champion Miesha Tate is coming out of retirement.
Last week, Tate announced that she would be ending her five-year retirement to make another run in the UFC.
During her time off, Tate started a family and gave birth to a baby girl, but now she’s ready to return to the cage after getting the itch to fight once again.
Tate had also been serving as a vice president for Asian-based mixed martial arts promotion ONE Championship, but she gave the company her 30-day notice after agreeing to return to the UFC.
“Time is very valuable, and I’m like, I just feel it in my heart, I want to do this,” Tate told reporters after the UFC 260 weigh-ins, as transcribed by MMAFighting.com. “I’m in a great position in my life.
“I don’t have to do this. Nobody’s twisting my arm. This is 100 percent because I’m in the best place I’ve ever been, and I want to do this.”
According to Tate, when she first sat down with the UFC boss he questioned if she was being motivated to return for financial reasons, but she insists it is just for the love of the sport.
“I literally had to hunt Dana down,” Tate said. “He blew off, like, my first five Instagram messages. It was actually starting to really piss me off. I was like Dana? Do I not have the right number?
“Finally I sat down with him and had that face-to-face conversation. He said, ‘So, what are you doing here?’ I was like, ‘I want to f*cking fight – that’s what I’m doing here.’ And he’s like, ‘All right,’ and he was kind of still like, ‘You’re not hurting for money?’ I was like, ‘No, I’m not. I’m actually making really good money right now with ONE Championship. This is because I want to do that. I want to come back to fight.’”
As for Tate’s goals in her comeback, she hopes to reclaim UFC gold and is drawing motivation from her daughter.
“Yes, absolutely I’m not here for anything less than gold,” Tate said. “I want to be the best in the world. I’d love to say that I’m doing this because I’m a mom, and I want to inspire my kids and all this, and that’s, like, cherry on the top.
“I want my daughter to see what strong women can do. I want my son to also see and appreciate strong women. I want to be that role model for my kids. But the reason I’m doing this, I’m doing this for me.”
A date and opponent for Tate’s return has yet to be named.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9ewMGXAyWg
