Why has there been such little buzz over the return of the former champ?
Back in March, the news broke that the former women’s bantamweight Miesha Tate would be making her return to the octagon after almost 5 years away from the sport. Tate retired from MMA after her unanimous decision loss to Raquel Pennington back at UFC 205. This was her second straight loss in the promotion, her first being at UFC 200 where she lost the belt to Amanda Nunes. With Tate being one of only 4 women to hold the title, why is her return to the octagon going seemingly unnoticed by the masses?
One of the things that surprised me while watching UFC 264 last week was the total absence of promotion for the former champions return. The show featured promotions for several upcoming events but failed to highlight Tate’s Co-main event return at this weeks fight night. At the time of her retirement, Miesha had only lost 2 recent fights, both to top names in the division, so it is going to be interesting to see where she fits into the division, if at all, following her return.
A big reason for the lack of promotion appears to be due to it being on the card that follows a ‘McGregor Pay-per-view’, which is something that usually draws the majority of the eyes of the community towards it and so following cards tend to be seen as ‘weaker’ in comparison and as such can be ignored.
With the women’s bantamweight division being seemingly devoid of ‘worthy’ challengers, it would only make sense that following a big win on her return that the rematch between current champion Nunes and the person she took the title from could be the next step. However, this does bring up another reason as to why the return is going unnoticed and that is the level of opponent ahead of Tate in Marion Reneau. Reneau has not been in particularly great form at the moment currently riding a 4 fight losing streak, losing most recently to Macy Chiasson. having said this it is important to remember that this will be Tate’s first fight in almost 5 years, where as Reneau has fought 8 times in the same time, albeit with mixed results. Tate does open as an 8 to 11 slight favourite according to Skybet.
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