Bethe Correia: Tate retirement is ‘bipolar’

Alexander Gustafsson is Gustaf’s son, Steve Bossé is a boss, and Dan Hardy most certainly is, heart and all. After her latest remarks, a number of fans are going to be convinced that Bethe Correia’s name, too, fits.

Miesha Tate recently retired after fighting professionally for nine years, during which she won the Strikeforce women’s bantamweight championship and the UFC women’s bantamweight championship. During a recent fan Q&A, Correia described Tate as ‘bipolar’ and weak for retiring when she did. Correia has been fighting since 2012.

“She showed she’s bipolar because when the UFC didn’t want her fighting for the belt, she wanted to retire,” said Correia, as transcribed by Guilherme Cruz for MMA Fighting. “She lost to Raquel and got herself in a bad phase, lost to Amanda, and announced her retirement. When you’re not going the way you want and you run away from it, that shows weakness.

“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.”

“My history with Miesha Tate is very old. 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.”

Correia recently recovered from and hand injury. She recently beat Jessica Eye via split decision at UFC 203 in September. Before that she suffered back to back losses, to Ronda Rousey and Raquel Pennington.