Rousey: Tate’s handshake just for cameras
Ronda Rousey: “I really think that if me and her fought alone in her gym if there weren’t people there watching, she wouldn’t have offered her hand to me.”
Ronda Rousey received a lot of flak from the fans and media for refusing to shake Miesha Tate’s hand after defeating her at UFC 168, however Rousey believes the handshake was just Tate trying to look good on camera:
“I really think that if me and her fought alone in her gym if there weren’t people there watching, she wouldn’t have offered her hand to me,” Rousey said at a Wednesday media luncheon. “Her actions were entirely influenced by being watched. My actions were all despite being watched.”
The way Rousey saw it, because her gut instinct was to refuse the handshake, if she had gone ahead and shook hands anyway, she would not be true to herself or her camp.
“It’s not a fakeable moment and it was entirely the right thing to do because I didn’t think about it,” Rousey said. “It was immediate. It was just like, ‘nope.’ Maybe if I took the time to think about it I would have changed my mind, but then it would have been the wrong decision, because it would have meant that my first inclination, I mean, I had that for a reason.”