#4 Miesha Tate
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Miesha Tate is a former UFC Women’s Bantamweight (BW/135 pound) champion. She is a life-long wrestler and is known for her excellent grappling skills, her heart and tenacity. She is also widely criticized for her terrible stand-up skills and her habit of running into her opponent’s strikes face-first just like her arch-rival Ronda Rousey.
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Tate has been rocked and dropped in several of her fights, right from her days as Strikeforce champion to her days inside the Octagon. After losing her Strikeforce belt to Rousey, Tate fought Cat Zingano, a fighter who is known for her Muay Thai (knees and elbows, in particular). Z
ingano has never been a great boxer. However, Tate still managed to run face-first into several punches thrown by Zingano in their three-round war. Despite having success at holding Zingano to the mat, Tate kept trying to exchange with the Muay Thai stylist on the feet, and eventually got battered by Zingano’s barrage of knees and elbows from the clinch.
Yet another example of Tate’s low fight-IQ is her rematch against Rousey. Tate had success at long-range against a rudimentary striker in Rousey, however, she kept shooting in for takedowns on a life-long judoka. It goes without saying that the judoka countered Tate and reversed many of Tate’s takedowns, going on to submit Tate in the third round.
Owing to her terrible stand-up skills and bad fight-IQ, Tate was seemingly destined to be an elite gatekeeper at best.
Tate then went on to face boxing-specialist Holly Holm at UFC 196. After getting thoroughly dominated on the feet, Tate caught Holm in a hail-Mary submission attempt in the waning moments of the final round of the fight.
Tate submitted Holm and won the UFC BW title. She went on to lose her title in her very first defence against Amanda Nunes and then also dropped a clear unanimous decision to Raquel Pennington at UFC 205.
Now, not to take anything away from ‘Cupcake’, but given her terrible striking and bad fight-IQ, it’s surprising that she tasted gold and at the tail-end of her career to say the least.
