I did see the Yahoo Sports story Kevin Iole wrote about how the ratings for TUF go up when there's a women's fight in the episode. I can't lie: it felt really good to see that the UFC fans - not only MMA fans but fans of the UFC who maybe hadn't seen any female fights before February of this year - look forward to watching the women fights so much.
Miesha Tate
I hate the stereotype that women who fight are 'butch' or 'wannabe men.' It's nice to be able to embrace being a beautiful, strong woman.
I like that I'm in shape but still look like a woman. I don't feel like I've had to give up my femininity to be an athlete. I feel good about my body because I work hard every day, and I still look and carry myself as a woman - a strong woman.
I know there's pros and cons to Trump, and people talk crap that he's had a lot of failed businesses, but failing a lot sometimes means you've tried more. And a lot of those people have succeeded more times than they failed.
People like myself have been pushing, competing, and promoting female MMA for a long time, and to see the fans accept a female division in the UFC so quickly is vindication that all that hard work amounted to something.
I would love to earn another fight with Ronda Rousey again. She's the best in the world, and as a competitor you want to go up against the best. She's demolished everyone and I think I'm the only one that has taken her into the third round. I'm going to keep fighting and try to earn another fight with her. I'd love to become the UFC World Champion.
I train twice a day, and I make sure I eat right. I'm an avid tea drinker, and I enjoy the benefits of drinking MateFit. It gives me energy, speeds up my metabolism and helps me shed excess water weight. I also do everything from MMA sparring to strength and conditioning. I make sure to do a combination of different things with my training.
I'm a woman who's been in a man's sport since the age of 15, and to see people finally seeing what I saw right from the start, that female fighters are just as good 'pound-for-pound' as our male counterparts.
When I went to college, I came across MMA. My first reaction was, 'No, I don't want to fight. I just want to learn jujitsu.' I didn't know what UFC was; in my mind it was this violent, ugly sport. But when I watched my first amateur fight, I fell in love with the sport and thought it was beautiful.
It's called 'Fight Valley,' and it's my first feature film. I just dove in and did the best I could. I don't think I'm gonna win any Academy Awards on this one. I had fun with it and hopefully will get more opportunities like that. It's about two sisters, one poor and one rich, and one goes into underground fighting.
I feel like I'm evolving quickly with my confidence, physically, just everything.
I think people relate to the person who gets knocked down or maybe has to come from behind and get that victory.
I've been wanting to be sponsored by some kind of hair product for a long time. I have a lot of hair, and it goes through a lot in my training camps anyways, so having some kind of great hair sponsor would probably be awesome for me. I'm kind of hard on my hair, but I think I have nice hair.
I would like to learn more about what I can do for my hair, because I think I don't really know; my poor hair is suffering because of my lack of knowledge.
I added a new strength training regimen in my training, and I feel like I've become a much stronger, more dynamic athlete. That makes me much more dangerous against anyone.
I'm training at Phase 1 Sports in Las Vegas, and it's a very high-end training facility for a lot of top-level athletes. I have been able to add a lot of power and the endurance to keep that power going. I've always been powerful, but the muscle conditioning I've been able to add has been a tremendous amount of help.
I know the first thing I want to do when I come back from a loss is to get in the gym and get better.
There's no facade; it's very real. I just don't get along with Ronda, and we don't see eye to eye on anything. We're just two completely different people. People can tell that our rivalry is very raw. It's very, very real.
There's a lot of girls in the division I really like, but I always feel like there's this underlying sense of a potential matchup, potential competition. It adds a different element.
There's a responsibility to represent female MMA that comes with being the champion, just as there's a responsibility to represent and promote the show when you coach TUF.
My freshman year of high school, I started wrestling, and I ended up loving it more than anything I'd ever done.
Every single woman that fights MMA has done just as much work as Ronda has; we just haven't gotten as much turnaround. Those women who came before her haven't been on magazine covers. They weren't plastered everywhere by the UFC. They didn't get the same reward back.
Make sure you are doing something you love to do when working out. Nobody likes to work, so when you do choose a workout, make it something you enjoy doing. You won't stick with it if you hate it and if it feels like work. Find something fun. My favorite thing to do is Jujitsu.
I think we've broken a lot of barriers and kind of shattered our glass ceiling that was there for women. There are so many great fighters, and we've proved a lot of people wrong. A lot of the times, our fights are the best fights on the card.
