Miesha Tate sympathizes with Nate Diaz after UFC 25th anniversary press conference

Late last week, it was announced that fan favorite lightweight contender Nate Diaz will make his long-awaited return to the Octagon opposite top contender Dustin Poirier. The pair are expected to collide in the co-main event of UFC 230 on November 3 in New York City.

On Friday, the UFC held a massive press conference featuring all the stars of their upcoming shows — including Diaz and Poirier. The promotion also took this opportunity to announce a highly anticipated lightweight title fight between champ Khabib Nurmagomedov and challenger Conor McGregor. This news cast a massive shadow over everybody else at the press conference — including Diaz.

Diaz, who has been the biggest rival of McGregor’s career, didn’t appreciate this turn of events. The Stockton, California native promptly stormed off the stage and later Tweeted that he would not be fighting Poirier after all.

Former UFC women’s bantamweight champion Miesha Tate says she understands Diaz’s frustration. In fact, she says she dealt with a similar situation in the heyday of her fighting career.

“I would feel the same way as Nate does,” Miesha Tate said on Sirius XM Fight Nation over the weekend (transcript via MMA Fighting). “Nate has a different personality than I do, he’s expressive in a different way, but of course [I would be mad]. I remember when I threatened retirement because I was so pissed off that they had promised that I would fight Ronda and then they ended up switching that out and having Holly [Holm] but they didn’t tell me. It’s the same thing that happened to Nate, essentially, it’s just that Nate was in front of everybody. I was pissed too, believe me.”

“I was mad but they don’t care,” Tate continued. “They know that they have a strong arm in a lot of this and it doesn’t really matter. Or if they do care, it’s not enough. Like, ‘I’m sorry but this is what you have to do for business.’ You can’t really argue with them. They’re the ones who are gonna make the final decision, so what can you do? What can Nate do?

“For me it was a whirlwind of emotions, just trying to decide what I even wanted to do next because I felt like it was so unfair. Then it was just coming to terms with, ‘Well, life’s not fair. What do you want to do about it? Are you ready to retire now or not?’ And the truth was I wasn’t ready to retire at that time. Obviously I still went on to fight Jessica Eye after that and went on to win the title against Holly later, so I wasn’t ready to retire but it was just the frustration.”

What do you think of Miesha Tate’s take on Nate Diaz’s frustration?

This article first appeared on BJPENN.COM on 8/6/2018.