Tate’s win, McGregor’s loss roil UFC plans

“After 16 years in this business,” Dana White was saying, a wry smile on his face, “the one thing you don’t ever do is think you know what’s going to happen. Because you don’t.”

The UFC president was standing at a news conference podium in the bowels of MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas early Sunday morning, 90 minutes after what he termed “pretty much the biggest fight ever” for his company had left the 14,898 in the building stunned.

White’s biggest male star, Conor McGregor, had just been silenced in the UFC 196 main event. Before that, the promotion’s highest-profile female champion, Holly Holm — still riding the buzz from snatching the bantamweight belt from Ronda Rousey a few months earlier — had been dethroned by Tacoma-native Miesha Tate.

Both of these stars had been expected to figure prominently in the planning for this summer’s milestone UFC 200 event. Now it’s back to the drawing board for White, who would have you believe this is the way things always go.

Still, the UFC president and the sport’s fans can be forgiven for dwelling on what might have been.

For Holm, there had been the option to wait for a rematch with Rousey, which White and many around mixed martial arts believe would have been the most lucrative fight in the sport’s history. Instead, the Albuquerque, New Mexico, fighter elected to make her first title defense against Tate.

On this night, the 29-year-old Tate (18-5) was on the verge of losing a title bid again, trailing on all three judges’ scorecards as the five-round fight entered its final two minutes. But then the wrestling-savvy Tate, who hails from Tacoma, and now trains in Las Vegas, took the champ out of her element. Holm, 34, is a multiple-time world boxing titlist whose standup game is her strength. Her takedown defense had kept her standing except in the second round, when Tate rode her on the mat for nearly the entire five minutes. Tate couldn’t repeat that success, though, until her relentlessness finally paid off.

“She’s a scrapper,” said Holm (10-1) after suffering her first MMA defeat. “She can be behind in a fight, and she can still finish. I let my guard down, and it cost me the fight.”

There was a scramble on the mat, and the challenger ended up securing a rear naked choke. Holm had escaped a similar predicament in the second, but not this time. The end came at 3 minutes 30 seconds of the round. “I was a pitbull on a bone,” said Tate. “I wouldn’t let go.”

McGregor might still end up on the UFC’s most glittery summertime marquee, but his appearance won’t carry as much weight as before. The 27-year-old Irishman was scheduled to challenge Rafael Dos Anjos for the lightweight belt at Saturday’s event, and if successful would have become the first fighter to simultaneously hold straps in two UFC weight classes. But that bid was put on ice less than two weeks before showtime after Dos Anjos broke his foot in training.

The UFC brought in Nate Diaz as a replacement opponent and made the bout at welterweight. This was an accommodation for Diaz (19-10), who is a natural lightweight but felt he didn’t have adequate time to make the 155-pound limit.

Diaz, a feisty 30-year-old out of Stockton, Calif., withstood the best that McGregor could dish out. The Irishman had knocked out his past five opponents, but this foe wasn’t impressed. “I’ve been fighting grownups for 10 years, 12 years,” Diaz had said to McGregor during a prefight press conference. “You knocked out three midgets and you’re pumped up.”

McGregor, who saw a 15-fight winning streak snapped, acknowledged that he’d bitten off more than he could swallow with the jump from 145 pounds to 170. “Usually, when I fight a man in the division I am champion in, they crumble under those shots,” he said. “But Nate took them very well.”

So there won’t be a Lawler fight, and there won’t be a Dos Anjos fight. McGregor plans to defend his 145-pound belt next, against either the man from whom he took it, Jos Aldo, or former lightweight champ Frankie Edgar.

This story was originally published March 7, 2016 at 6:37 PM with the headline "Tate’s win, McGregor’s loss roil UFC plans."