Miesha Tate hopes Ronda Rousey has grown even more as a person since their UFC rivalry

Miesha Tate says she holds no grudges against Ronda Rousey these days and wishes she could do the same for her former rival, but she'll never know.

Rousey, who rose to fame as the first UFC women's bantamweight champion since women entered the sport in 2013, spoke frankly in a recent interview about the decline of her mixed martial arts career. It began with Rousey opening up about her history of concussions, which she acknowledged were a major factor in her retirement from mixed martial arts. Rousey said she suffered a concussion when she stepped into the cage for her November 2015 bout with Holly Holm, in which she suffered a spectacular defeat via head kick knockout. The statement was not well received by critics, who saw it as an excuse to undermine Holm's performance.

Rousey, who was inducted into the UFC Hall of Fame in 2018, also recently said she thought Joe Rogan and the MMA media were a “bunch of f—ers” for turning their backs on her after her knockout losses to Holm and Amanda Nunes 13 months ago.

For Tate, Rousey's comments are significant.

“Personally, I no longer have the animosity that I once had toward Ronda,” Tate said on SiriusXM's “MMA Today” show with Ryan McKinnell. “The contempt, the frustration, I've worked through that, admitted my shortcomings and tried to become a better person. I wish I could say I've seen the same growth with Ronda, but I don't think so. She continues to hold on to resentment, frustration and anger, and it seems to me that that's what drives her next actions.”

“I don't think a large part of the MMA community has ever turned their back on Ronda.”

Rousey was a media darling at the height of her powers and enjoyed a fierce rivalry with Tate, first submitting him in March 2012 in Strikeforce and then again in December 2013 at UFC 168, the final bout of a heated season of The Ultimate Fighter, where Tate and Rousey served as match coaches.

At the time, it was clear how much Rousey disliked Tate for dwelling on the negative, and Tate still believes that excessive dwelling on the negative is Rousey's biggest problem.

“She forgot that there are hundreds of thousands of girls out there who still adore her,” Tate said. “They didn't care if she won or lost. They thought she was amazing either way. I don't think she's anywhere near where I want her to be yet. I think she's still very hurt by it, but I think she's more focused on herself than on self-improvement. I think she's still focused on, 'Oh, this happened to me, everyone attacked me and I got a concussion and nobody thought about me.' I'm like, wait a minute, that's not right.

“Fame comes with a few setbacks. No one in life stays unscathed, especially when your life is placed on a scale where you witness failure just as much as you witness success. But that happens to all champions. This isn't a Ronda Rousey versus the world situation. When you're great, people just want to see greatness gone.”