Bethe Correia: Miesha Tate ‘showed she’s bipolar’ by retiring from MMA

Miesha Tate hasn’t managed to avoid scrutiny for her decision to retire at UFC 205.

‘Cupcake’ announced her decision to step away from the Octagon when she lost her second consecutive fight to Raquel Pennington earlier this month at Madison Square Garden in New York.

The MMA fan favorite is hoping to secure a broadcasting role with FOX, but Bethe Correia thinks she is running from adversity and claims that Tate is ‘bipolar’.

"She showed she’s bipolar because when the UFC didn’t want her fighting for the belt, she wanted to retire,” Correia said at a media scrum in Sao Paulo, Brazil last week, per MMA Fighting’s Guilherme Cruz. “She lost to Raquel and got herself in a bad phase, lost to Amanda, and announced her retirement," Correia said during a Q&A session. "When you’re not going the way you want and you run away from it, that shows weakness.”

Tate, 30, told her corner before the judges’ decision was announced at UFC 205 that she just didn’t have the drive to compete any more.

Correia, who made her mixed martial arts debut in 2012 (Tate has been fighting since 2007), said she’s never felt like retiring despite suffering a devastating loss to Ronda Rousey.

"I’ve been through a lot of tough moments in the UFC and never wanted to retire. Quite the opposite. My fight against Ronda left a damage here, and I want to fight more, win more, to have experience, in order to have Rousey vs. Correia 2, maybe here in Sao Paulo, so it can be very different, and leave with my head up."

Correia has also lost to Pennington but rebounded with a win over Jessica Eye at UFC 203 earlier this year.

The Brazilian claims to have a rough history with Tate and says she would have loved to have fought her in the Octagon.

"My history with Miesha Tate is very old," Correia said. "First, she called me out as an athlete on social media, and also said a lot of bad things about my personal life, demoralized me as an athlete, and I wanted to fight her, but our paths went different directions.

"I wanted to fight her again, but at that moment she… I even said I’d fight her for free, in any card, in her backyard, really, because I still have the things she said about me stuck in my throat, especially about my loss to Ronda. She said some bad things, but in the end I saw that her attitude, announcing her retirement, that I’m way above her."

Tate retires as a former two-promotion champion (Strikeforce and UFC) with a professional record of 18-7. The MMA veteran lost to Ronda Rousey twice but managed to build her own brand and establish herself as one of the sport’s most renowned female fighters.