Miesha Tate vs. Sarah Kaufman Should Happen Next

By Michael David Smith - Lead Blogger

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Miesha Tate put on a great show on Friday night, solidifying her position as one of the toughest women in mixed martial arts by defeating Hitomi Akano and Maiju Kujala, and wasting no time in starting to build her next fight by calling out the Strikeforce 135-pound champion, Sarah Kaufman.

The bad news is that Strikeforce has already announced that Kaufman's next fight will come against Marloes Coenen, not Tate.

The good news is that there's a simple solution to that problem: Strikeforce needs to reverse course and book Tate vs. Kaufman right away.

I've criticized Strikeforce before for not being able to answer the question, "What's next?" but failing to book Tate vs. Kaufman and instead booking Coenen vs. Kaufman would be Strikeforce's biggest mistake yet.

From a competitive standpoint, Tate is much more deserving of a 135-pound title fight than Coenen is. Tate is on a five-fight winning streak since losing to Kaufman last year. Coenen, on the other hand, has lost two of her last three, and her most recent fight was a drubbing at the hands of 145-pound champion Cris Cyborg. How does losing a fight at 145 pounds make you the No. 1 contender at 135 pounds?

And from a marketing standpoint, Tate vs. Kaufman makes more sense than Coenen vs. Kaufman as well. Tate is better known to American MMA fans than Coenen and is getting a fresh dose of attention thanks to Friday night's tournament title -- on Saturday morning her name was one of the most-searched terms on Google.

A Kaufman-Tate title fight would be Strikeforce's most significant female fight since Cyborg beat Gina Carano a year ago. Keeping that fight from the fans would be just plain dumb.

Read More: Miesha Tate (MMA), Sarah Kaufman (MMA)

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