Miesha Tate still thinks about fighting, but she’ll stick to grappling competitions

Former UFC women’s bantamweight champion Miesha Tate, who is now a proud Mom, has left the perilous world of cage fighting behind. That said, the former champ and WMMA legend is eager to keep her tools sharp in the gym. In fact, she hopes to compete in more competitive grappling matches in the future.

“I definitely see training as part of my life moving forward,” Tate recently told MMAjunkie. “There’s no way I could just let that go. It’s been such a big part of my life since, I would say, 15 years old is when I started wrestling. I’m anxious to get back. I’m not quite there, but I’m really close. I’m working out, but I just haven’t actually got back on the mat.

“I think I want to start with some drilling and then work into grappling, and I would like to compete in some grappling competitions of some sort.”

While Tate is no longer a professional fighter, she’s still heavily involved in the MMA industry as the host of MMA Today on SiriusXM, and a mainstay at Xtreme Couture and the UFC Performance Institute. That said, her continued exposure to the sport is not enough to convince her to don the gloves again.

She is occasionally tempted, however, and were it not for all the obligations that precede an MMA fight, she might be tempted to do it again.

“Sometimes when I watch it, in the heat of the moment, it’s like, ‘It would be great if I could just go back in there,’ but the thing is all the work and training,” Tate said. “If you could just show up and fight, I would probably do it. But to have to go through the whole training camp, the dieting and the politics of everything, it gets crazy. And the sport has changed – I don’t know if it’s for the better or for the worse, but it’s definitely much different than when I started, and for me, I don’t have that same calling that I did in the forefront of when I started this all, so things have changed, and I think where my passion really lies now with is my family and with my daughter, so I think the grappling should suffice that competitive nature I have.”

If Miesha Tate steps onto the mats for a professional grappling bout, who would you like to see her compete against?

This article first appeared on BJPenn.com on 7/23/2018.