Miesha Tate eyes end-of-year title defense, Ronda Rousey trilogy fight imminent?

Miesha Tate and Ronda Rousey will forever be tied together due to their longstanding rivalry stemming back to the Strikeforce days.

Rousey beat Tate back in 2012 under the Strikeforce banner to claim the women’s bantamweight championship. A year later she fought Tate once again under the UFC banner where she successfully defended her UFC women’s bantamweight championship.

Fast forward three years to the present day, and Tate is the UFC women’s bantamweight champion while Rousey is currently on an indefinite hiatus following her UFC 193 knockout loss to Holly Holm.

With her UFC 200 title defense against Amanda Nunes less than two weeks away, Tate spoke to MMAJunkie to explain her plans for the rest of the year.

“I want to take a little time to enjoy myself,” Tate said. “I went straight into my camp with Holly, straight into (boyfriend Bryan Caraway’s) camp with Aljamain Sterling, and then into this camp, which has been awesome to keep that momentum going. But my birthday is in August, and I’d like to take just a little bit of time. So I think in November or December would be reasonable.”

Given that Rousey is supposed to return in November, Tate was asked about a potential end-of-year fight with Rousey:

“None of that is even worth talking about unless I win this fight,” she said. “I know how important this is, and it has all of my focus. Whatever my come after that, it’s just very important that I win this fight so I can even begin to discuss other fights. I just have to focus on July 9, and after that, I’ll be able to answer your questions better.”