Today I'm honored to introduce you to Misha Tate, one of the greatest fighters of all time.

Misha is a former UFC Bantamweight world champion and one of the pioneers who has catapulted women's fighting and mixed martial arts.

Misha is a wife, mother of two children, host of the Built for Growth podcast, a behavior change coach, and someone I will

point my daughters to when they are looking for inspiration. Misha, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you. It's a great introduction. I like when you, you know, you asked me before, like,

hey, is this, you know, does this sound good? But yeah, I liked hearing you read it again.

So I think even though you are very, very well known across the world, I don't think a large

part of my audience knows who you are. So who are you? Oh, man, that's some layered questions.

I could start out with things that I've done that people know me for. Sure. I think,

let's start out with me as a little girl.

I was a bit of a tomboy.

You know, I like to play outside.

I typically had like twigs and, you know, twigs of my hair, dirt on my knees and under my fingernails.

You know, I like to climb trees.

Did you have siblings? I did have siblings, but my young, my nearest sibling was seven years younger than me. Okay. So, pretty big age gap. So my brother was seven years younger and my sister was another seven and a half years younger. Okay. So big age gaps. Yeah. And I was the oldest. So, um, people ask me like, did you know that you were going to be a fighter? Was there like telltale signs? And I mean, for the longest time I was like, no. And I mean, really not. But other than I liked doing challenging things, I guess, is just only maybe the precursor. And that and my mom and I, you know, like most kids, when they play with their Barbies, I think most girls, like, just dress them up and, like, to change their outfits and stuff. Like, I liked to fight my Barbies. You and your mom would, like, fight? Yeah, we would fight them. We would literally fight until her head's popped off. Was she a fighter? No. No.

And she was just like, cool, let's fight our Barbies. Yeah. My mom has always been pretty supportive of my hairbrained ideas, you know? That's one thing I will say. She's never held me back. I remember when I started wrestling when I was in high school. And it actually wasn't my idea. My best friend at that time, her name was Sharon. and we were sitting in English class and she was like, we got to find something to do this fall season. We're freshmen and sports seasons have rotated for what we were used to in middle school. And so we're like, hmm, it's basketball season for women and there's nothing else to do. And like she was like little tiny, half Korean, like just not built for basketball. And I just suck. Like, I have no other excuses. It's like, I just know what I'm not good at. I can't dribble and I don't jump high. So I was like, well, okay, that's not the sport for me. And so she's like, let's go out for wrestling. And I was like, can we do that? Like, it's all guys wrestling team, right? And she's like, well, I think so because like, they can't tell us

we can't if they don't offer that same sport for the girls. And I was like, huh, okay. I never thought about going out for wrestling before in my life. I always thought it was kind of a weird sport. I mean, in middle school.

I went to like a couple matches.

And I was like, this is so strange.

These guys are wearing skin tight outfits and like rolling around each other.

And like, this is so strange. These guys are wearing skin tight outfits and like rolling around with each other. And like I had no concept of like the rules or they even literally the purpose. Yeah. This is a kid and you just see these, you know, and at that time, I mean, your body, you're like, you're just like vulnerable. Like I think boys and girls like so to see somebody in like a skin tight outfit like rolling around on top of like another. You're like, I, this is weird. And then no, lo and behold, I went home and I asked my mom. I was like, can I go out for wrestling? And she's like, what? I was like, yeah, you know, I just want to give it a try. I just want to, I just want to try it. Sharon's going to do it with me and we'll wrestle each other. We probably won't even really have to wrestle the guys.

Yeah, right. So she was like, look, if you want to do that, she's like, I won't tell you no, but I will ask that we don't tell your dad. Oh, really? No way. Oh, yeah. We didn't, for a while, that was a secret. For how long?

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