New Strikeforce Champion Marloes Coenen Comments on Winning the Title and Facing Miesha Tate

When it comes to unlikely champions, the newly-crowned Strikeforce Women’s Welterweight (135-pound) Champion Marloes Coenen seemed pretty unlikely. Coenen was coming off of a humbling TKO loss to Strikeforce Women’s Middleweight (145-pound) Champion and engine of destruction Cristiane Santos, but was nevertheless awarded another championship opportunity after dropping down in weight, this time against then-champion Sarah Kaufman. Coenen made the absolute most out of the opportunity and outright dominated Kaufman, but the new champion is now facing a very real threat to her belt in the form of Miesha Tate. Here’s what the new Strikeforce champion had to say about her championship-winning performance at the recent Strikeforce: “Diaz vs. Noons 2″ event as well as her early thoughts on Tate, who is more than likely her next opponent.

Credit goes to MMA Mania for the find: “I thought [the fight with Kaufman] would become a brawl. The strategy was to get into it. It didn’t happen… Maybe she didn’t want to exchange punches much. At the start of the third, my trainer told me to give her a straight punch and go for a takedown… Like I said before, winning the world title can be a life-changing thing for me…. Miesha won the tournament, she’s a great grappler and obviously very good. I will definitely have to stand with her.”

If Coenen can consistently perform at the level that was on display during “Diaz vs. Noons 2”, she’ll have a lot of advantages going into her first title defense. For one, Coenen seems very difficult to take to the ground despite how tall she is. Her long stature also means that she has a decided reach advantage, and to her credit, she fully exploited that advantage in her fight with Kaufman.

And to top it all off- not only will you eat some big shots when you try to get close enough to Coenen to take her down, not only will you have a tough time taking her down and more than likely eat even more strikes when trying to…in addition to all of that, you even run the risk of getting submitted if you do finally succeed in taking Coenen to the ground. Coenen impressed me considerably in her fight with Kaufman, if she continues to put it all together she could end up being the most complete fighter in the entirety of Strikeforce’s women’s welterweight division. I think Cris Cyborg would still maul her if she ever tried to get back to 145, but then again, I think Cris Cyborg is so good that she could give a lot of male fighters a run for their money.

However, Miesha Tate is more than a credible threat, she’s likely the biggest obstacle Coenen will face in her drive to become a dominant champion. Tate is 11-2 and is on a fantastic five-fight win-streak. She just got done winning two fights in one night, so she has considerable endurance, a big heart, and is very tough. Tate looks good and fights better, and this should be an amazing match-up between two gifted performers.

In the end, though…what a difference one great performance can make. I’m picking Coenen to win this one even though I harped on and on about about how I disliked Strikeforce giving out another title shot to another fighter coming off of a loss. If Coenen can keep her weight down and keep her fighting level high, she’s a huge threat to anyone in Strikeforce’s scarcely-populated women’s welterweight division. Sometimes a big loss that leads to a drop down in weight can be the absolute best thing to happen to a fighter, and that seems to be just the case for Marloes Coenen.

And what do you think, fans and friends? Did Coenen make you a believer the way she made me a believer with her performance against Kaufman, or do you still have some doubts? And who do you think wins Kaufman/Tate?