Former UFC Women’s Bantamweight Champion Miesha Tate has been involved in plenty of big fights before retiring at UFC 205.
When it comes to a hypothetical super fight between UFC Lightweight Champion Conor McGregor and former UFC Welterweight Champion Georges St. Pierre, the retired star says the Irish fighter would walk away victorious.
“Conor McGregor, I’ve underestimated the guy a number of times, thinking he wasn’t going to win some of the fights that he won and he did it,” said Tate on MMA Tonight. “The man is truly in a league of his own. When it comes to his game planning, when it comes to his trash talking, when it comes to getting inside people’s heads, nobody does it better than Conor McGregor. So I absolutely would not count him out in a fight like that. I think the speed favors him. I think he has great striking and I think the fact that GSP’s been out for so long, I think Conor McGregor can put together a strategy to beat pretty much anybody and I think the matchup actually favors Conor. I feel almost bad saying that because I’ve been a huge GSP fan for a really long time. He’s perfect when he fights. Maybe not the most exciting fighter you’ve ever watched but he’s almost perfect and that’s so hard to do. If you’ve been an athlete in any sport, to have a perfect game or a perfect match or a perfect bout, it almost never happens. You watch him go out there and he’s pretty much perfect in all of his fights. He never waivers from his strategy and he’s like a robot, like somebody’s controlling a controller somewhere and he’s just doing exactly what he needs to do to get through those fights. But I think with this one, Conor’s just so hard to beat and he’s so hard to get around mentally. I think the speed actually, being the smaller guy, does favor Conor.”
McGregor hasn’t fought in the UFC since defeating Eddie Alvarez at UFC 205, while GSP returns to action against Michael Bisping at UFC 217.
Tate believes it would be McGregor’s punching power that makes the different in a potential fight with GSP.
“So I just think he would probably do well. He’s evolving, he’s very athletic, he’s heavy handed. I think he could knock out a lot of guys bigger than him. Look how well he did against Mayweather. I was so impressed with how he did there. I thought he was gonna lose that fight handily and he hung in there tough,” says Tate.
There are currently no plans for McGregor and GSP to fight, but McGregor has fought in the welterweight division twice before.
