The biggest week for sports bra discussion in the history of mixed martial arts.
The new Reebok fight kits for the UFC’s female fighters came under scrutiny last weekend when, at the end of her fight against Jessamyn Duke, Elizabeth Phillips’ nipple was exposed in a grappling exchange.
Questions were rightly asked about the suitability of the new sports bras for competition as they had failed already, a mere two weeks after they were first introduced to the octagon.
And it obviously concerned Miesha Tate as she opted to double up on her attire for her bantamweight bout with Jessica Eye later that night.
“I doubled-up after I saw that,” Tate told MMAJunkie. “I didn’t see it, but I heard about it. I was like, ‘I’m putting on another sports bra, and I don’t care.’ It was a Reebok (sports bra), but it wasn’t part of the uniform.
“I was like, ‘I don’t care. I’m putting it on. You can’t make me go out there after seeing that fight – with just one (sports bra) on.’ I doubled up.”
And Tate, who has been announced as the next opponent for Ronda Rousey if Rowdy gets through Bethe Correia at UFC 190, also claimed that she plans to contact Reebok about how to improve the design of the sports bras to prevent a recurrence of the wardrobe malfunction.
“There’s definitely some input (I’ll share),” she said. “We need a thicker band around the base, to kind of make sure it stays down. It’s just kind of soft. … You don’t want to have to worry about that kind of stuff in the middle of a fight.”
