Ex-champ Miesha Tate determined to bounce back at UFC 205

NEW YORK — Las Vegan Miesha Tate has had quite a year.

After winning the UFC women’s bantamweight belt she had so doggedly pursued for several years, she lost the belt by a brutal first-round knockout against Amanda Nunes in July at UFC 200 at T-Mobile Arena.

Now, Tate will look to bounce back from the crushing defeat when she fights Raquel Pennington on Saturday at UFC 205, the organization’s first card at Madison Square Garden.

Tate is reserving final judgment on 2016 until after her fight.

“It has been a crazy, roller-coaster year,” she said Wednesday inside the world’s most famous arena. “But as long as I go out there and win on Saturday, I’ll consider it a successful year.”

Tate is thrilled to be part of this historic event, but she would have fought anywhere.

After scratching, crawling and brawling her way to the UFC title before winning it with a submission of Holly Holm in March, Tate lost it soon after when Nunes broke her nose early in their fight before choking her out.

Tate has dealt with defeats before, but losing the belt after only four months on such a massive stage as UFC 200 was difficult.

“It’s always terrible when you lose,” she said. “It’s awful. It’s hard to deal with. Myself, I just went on a soul-searching mission and took a little trip. I traveled to Belgium and Thailand and started my training camp for this fight there. I just wanted to refresh myself. Everyone’s different, but I just wanted to get back in the win column as quickly as possible, so I asked for a fight.”

She didn’t necessarily ask for the opponent. Tate coached Pennington on “The Ultimate Fighter,” and the two have remained friendly.

Tate admitted it’s not an ideal matchup.

“It’s weird, I’m not going to lie,” she said. “But I don’t think I’ll have any problem with it once the fight starts. I know it’s weird to think about now, and it might be a little weird afterward, but I truly think once the cage door closes, all of that goes out and it doesn’t matter who the other person is. I certainly don’t think you have to hate someone to fight them. I fight people in the gym all the time that I like. It’s a sport, no different than playing volleyball or soccer or tennis or anything. You’re there to compete.”

In her quest to get the title back, Tate is embracing her roots. Her coach and boyfriend, UFC fighter Bryan Caraway, believes they might have been too ambitious in the gym before the Nunes fight.

“We just got back to the basics for this fight,” he said. “She’s been really trying to expand as a mixed martial artist, and I think maybe we focused too much on changing stuff and trying to expand too fast. Sometimes you lose sight of what made her great in the first place, just biting down on the mouthpiece, putting her chin down and chucking bombs. She wanted to get back to her roots, and that’s what she did.

“You’re going to see Miesha back to her old self, putting pressure on her opponent and being a grinder.”

She’s also relying on her past to help bounce back mentally from the loss. Tate has been in this position before, and she believes she knows what to do to get back on track.

“It’s definitely not my first time being in this situation where I have to try to come off a loss and be better for it,” she said. “I feel like I’ll be able to handle it just fine. I feel really good.”

The bout is part of a pay-per-view card headlined by a title fight between Conor McGregor and lightweight champion Eddie Alvarez.

Contact Adam Hill at ahill@reviewjournal.com or 702-277-8028. Follow @adamhilllvrj on Twitter.