Tate: Rousey ‘Focused On Self Instead Of Self-Growth’

“She forgot that there were hundreds of thousands of little girls around the world that were still idolizing her. They didn’t care if she won or lost. They thought she was amazing either way.”

Ronda Rousey is playing the blame game (again).

The former UFC bantamweight champion, who walked away from combat sports after suffering back-to-back knockout losses to Holly Holm and Amanda Nunes, claims the MMA media turned the fans against her and convinced the world she was a fraud.

As for her two professional defeats, she attributes them to her “secret” concussion history and not the skills of her opponents.

That hasn’t stopped Rousey from anointing herself the greatest fighter who ever lived, even with fake friends actively working to undermine her. Or maybe the Olympic bronze medalist is too fragile to face any sort of constructive criticism.

Even her grateful ex-rival, Miesha Tate, suggests Rousey needs to let go of her anger.

“I personally don’t have the animosity that I had for Ronda at one point,” Tate said on Sirius XM’s “MMA Today” show with Ryan McKinnell. “The disdain, the frustration, I’ve been able to work through those things and see my fault in it and try to be a better person. I wish that I could say that I saw the same growth from Ronda, but it doesn’t seem that way. It certainly seems that she’s holding onto the resentment, the frustration and the anger, and allowing it to dictate her next moves. I do not think the MMA community, in large part, ever turned their back on Ronda.”

Tate had a sizable role in Rousey’s rise to fame, thanks to a heated rivalry in Strikeforce that carried over to UFC. In addition to their wildly-entertaining run on The Ultimate Fighter (TUF) 18, “Cupcake” and “Rowdy” ran it back in the UFC 168 co-main event in late 2013.

In addition, Tate predicted a loss to Nunes would send Rousey into retirement.

“She forgot that there were hundreds of thousands of little girls around the world that were still idolizing her,” Tate said. “They didn’t care if she won or lost. They thought she was amazing either way. She doesn’t seem to have come to the point where I would like to see her be yet. I think she’s still really hurt by it, but I think she’s very focused on self instead of self-growth. I think she’s still focused on, ‘Well, this is what happened to me, all these people turned on me, I had all these concussions happen to me, and nobody was thinking about me.’ It’s like, well, hang on, it’s not quite like that.”

Rousey (12-2) was cheered during her UFC Hall of Fame induction in summer 2018.

“People beat you down a bit, it comes with fame,” Tate continued. “Nobody gets away unscathed in life, much less if your life is put on a magnitude scale where everybody gets to witness your rise like they witness your fall. But it happens to every champion. This is not a Ronda Rousey vs. the world situation. It’s when you are great, sometimes people just want to see greatness fall.”

Tate (20-9) is coming off a submission win over Julia Avila at UFC Austin.