A move to flyweight isn’t the only big change ahead for former UFC women’s bantamweight champion Miesha Tate. A Tweet posted by the Big Brother account revealed that Tate will be joining the cast of Celebrity Big Brother for 2022, alongside the likes of NSYNC’s Chris Kirkpatrick and Queer Eye host Carson Kressley.
In the promo, Tate can be seen saying ““My name is Miesha ‘Cupcake’ Tate, I’m best known for fighting in the UFC. Oh, and winning the UFC women’s bantamweight world championship.”
Former UFC Champ Miesha Tate Joins Celebrity Big Brother
It’s looking like 2022 will be a busy year for the former champ, with Tate set to fight Lauren Murphy at flyweight in May. Doing so will require a drop down from bantamweight’s 135-pound limit to 125. Tate has long hinted that she wants to try her luck in a lower weight division than the 135-pound arena where she once held UFC gold, and it seems that her unanimous decision loss to Ketlken Vieira was the final push she needed to make the change.
Miesha Tate was, at one point, one of the biggest stars in women’s MMA. In 2016, she defeated Holly Holm via rear naked choke to earn the women’s bantamweight title, only to lose it in her next fight to Amanda Nunes. This began the long reign of Nunes at the top of women’s MMA, and by the end of the year Tate announced her retirement.
Miesha Tate left the Octagon in November 2016 following a loss to Raquel Pennington, choosing to retire from competition in order to focus on her family. In her five-year absence from competition she gave birth to two children. However, with her kids a little older, Miesha Tate returned to the UFC last year, announcing her arrival with a dominant TKO victory over Marion Reneau.
Of course, anyone familiar with the UFC’s colorful history will know this isn’t the first time the worlds of MMA and reality TV have crossed over. Arguably the most famous incidence of this is the UFC’s TV show, The Ultimate Fighter, a TV competition in which amateur fighters compete for the chance at a UFC contract.
Interestingly, Tate’s venture into TV comes shortly after she declared that she wasn’t interested in anything that could make fighting look like a secondary priority.
She called female fighters using OnlyFans as a way to make money “desperate”, and of the platform said that “I have no problem with women going out there, men going out there, whoever wants to get on OnlyFans, do it. But for me, I don’t want to be perceived as someone who is fighting as a secondary [option] or getting attention for fighting as a secondary [option]”.
Are you looking forward to seeing Miesha Tate on Celebrity Big Brother? Let us know in the comments.
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