Damn you, MMA gods, I think? With this injury, we are granted an opportunity to get some exciting TV with Rousey vs. Tate, one of the better rivalries in MMA right now, but on the flipside it’s the fourth UFC title fight in a year where someone gets a shot at the belt coming off a loss. That’s pretty lame, but really, what can you do? Sometimes these things happen when one half of the coaches in the next Ultimate Fighter destroys their knee in training, which will keep Cat on the sidelines for possibly the remainder of the year. This is what Cat said to Yahoo Sports:
“I was doing my regular routine, my strength and conditioning. I was jumping over tunnels that were about 12 inches high. I’d jumped over them like 10 times already. This one time, I jumped up and my left knee came down right on track and my right knee bent outward. Snap, crackle, pop, and I hit the floor.
That was all she wrote. It was terrible. It hurt bad, but the thing that bothered me most was the sound. I never experienced anything like that.”
So now the Miesha Tate vs. Ronda Rousey hype train can begin anew, even though that rivalry is a lot like Anderson Silva vs. Chael Sonnen. Sure, it’s going to bring in ratings and will make for good reality TV, but Miesha’s biggest claim to fame against Ronda is simply lasting the longest of all of Ronda’s opponents. Nevertheless, Ronda is pleased:
“This is what we really wanted all along,” Rousey told Yahoo! Sports. “Everyone said an Ultimate Fighter between me and Miesha would be the best. We have a personal history with each other and this is a personal show. For some reason, me and Miesha are intertwined in fate like Ali and Frazier or something like that.
“I think people will look back at this as one of the monumental rivalries and look back at this as one of those things that really cemented women’s MMA.”
She makes a good point there, as WMMA is still in its infancy, and this rivalry, however competitive it may be, is still one that will be on everyone’s lips for at least three months in 2013.
