Another piece of cage candy

Last week, MMA Junkie talked up relative unknown Cindy Dandois as the future of women’s MMA. Yesterday, Five Ounces of Pain pimped Erin Toughill as the next challenger to Strikeforce women’s champ Cris “Cyborg” Santos. Today, it’s Miesha Tate.

Now, I’m all in favour of giving women’s MMA a bigger spotlight, and Tate’s a good young fighter (she’s 23 and has a 6-2 record). She’s a great addition to Strikeforce’s growing roster of female fighters and she’s certainly “marketable,” as you can see above.

But her last fight was a unanimous-decision loss to Sarah Kaufman at a Strikeforce Challengers event in May. Kaufman is 10-0 and went on to beat Shayna Baszler by unanimous decision just one month later. Kaufman has incredible boxing and Muay Thai and great takedown defence, and as she showed against both Tate and Baszler, her submission skills are sharp, too. She’s the real future of the Strikeforce 135-pound division. (Of course, in the Tate interview she does say that she wants to face Kaufman for the Strikeforce 135-pound belt if and when they create it.)