Former Strikeforce women's bantamweight champion Miesha Tate will return to the cage in August – on the same night the new champion defends her belt for the first time.
Tate (12-3 MMA, 5-2 SF) will face Julie Kedzie (16-9 MMA, 0-1 SF) on Aug. 18. Strikeforce officials on Monday announced the fight booking, which is expected to be part of the main card.
"Strikeforce: Rousey vs. Kaufman" takes place at Valley View Casino Center in San Diego and features a women's bantamweight title fight between champion Ronda Rousey, who beat Tate for the belt in March, and former champion Sarah Kaufman.
The evening's main card airs on Showtime, and Showtime Extreme carries the preliminary fights.
Tate took a six-fight win streak into her title fight against Rousey in Columbus, Ohio. The two had built up a weeks-long rivalry in the media, and their pre-fight weigh-in featured a tense moment that needed the fighters separated.
But when the fight rolled around, like she had done to all her previous opponents, Rousey caught Tate in an armbar, twisting it gruesomely before the then-champ finally tapped 4:27 into the first round.
Before the title fight loss to Rousey, Tate had taken the belt from Marloes Coenen the previous July with a fourth-round arm-triangle choke. The Team Alpha Male fighter got her shot at Coenen when she won a four-woman women's bantamweight tournament, beating Maiju Kujala and Hitomi Akano on the same night in August 2010.
Kedzie will enter the fight looking to rebound from a unanimous decision loss to Alexis Davis nearly a year ago in her Strikeforce debut. She was expected to get back to action this past September, but had to pull out of the fight with an injury. Consequently, when she steps in against Tate, it will have been more than a year since her last fight.
Before the loss to Davis, Kedzie, who trains at the Greg Jackson camp in Albuquerque, N.M., had put together a four-fight win streak.
Source [urlhttp://mmajunkie.com/news/29482/former-champ-miesha-tate-meets-julie-kedzie-at-strikeforce-rousey-vs-kaufman.mma]Former champ Miesha Tate meets Julie Kedzie at 'Strikeforce: Rousey vs. Kaufman'[/url]