Tate: I’ve coached Pennington, but there’s still mystery

Former UFC women’s bantamweight champion Miesha Tate spoke recently with Champions.co about her fight with Raquel Pennington at UFC 205. Tate coached Pennington during The Ultimate Fighter 18, but acknowledges there is some mystery there.

The fighter began by deftly dismissing a question about her personal life, as it is personal. She Tate turned to the Pennington fight.

I believe Raquel is the kind of fighter that’s constantly evolving, said Tate. She is a very tenacious person, and I’ve seen her training when I coached on The Ultimate Fighter. And she was the first one to really want to train with the guys. She’s tough, she’s durable, she’s got some great qualities about herself.

There’s still a bit of mystery. You still don’t know what it’s like to get in and fight someone at 100 percent until you do so. So even though we have trained here and there, and I have coached her and stuff, I can’t say that I completely know what to expect when I step in the cage.

“I have no idea what’s going on with the Cyborg thing. People keep asking me, would you fight her? I say ‘Yah, I would fight her.’ And that seems to irritate her. I can’t tell. Maybe she doesn’t run her Twitter. But it seems pretty irritated. Whoever runs you Twitter needs to …”

People have asked me, ‘Well who do you want to fight next?’ I’m like, ‘well, there’s a lot of shaking out to do.’ With Ronda coming back, is she going to stay back, if she loses, if she wins, Amanda, the belt, where is it going to be?

Obviously I’d like my next fight to be a title fight. That’s what I would prefer. But it depends on a lot of different things. So I just don’t want to get ahead of myself. The only thing that I know is Nov. 12, Raquel Pennington, New York, UFC 205. So, that’s it, for the moment.

Miesha Tate fights Raquel Pennington on the main card of UFC 205 on Saturday, November 12, 2016, at Madison Square Garden in New York City, New York.