It was a bit of an emotional pendulum for Miesha Tate en route to her title shot against Holly Holm, but she made her opportunity at UFC 196. Tate’s fifth-round submission over Holm not only earned her her first title since she was Strikeforce’s bantamweight champion, but it also opened up a fair amount of intrigue as to what comes next.



Does the UFC do a trilogy fight between her and uber-star Ronda Rousey, who has defeated Tate twice already? Is a rematch with Holm in order, given how memorable the first fight was? Should Tate defend against a game-ready Amanda Nunes, who defeated Valentina Shevchenko the same night Tate rearranged the title picture?



According to her coach, Robert Follis, he’d settle for any of those scenarios — but it just depends on how the cookie crumbles.



"What do I think is going to happen? This sport’s so crazy," he said during an appearance on The MMA Hour. "We went from having a title fight to not having it. Will Ronda be ready? Is she going to be doing a movie? Does she really want to fight now? Do they want a rematch with Holly? Do they thing that’s marketable enough? Do they want to put Amanda Nunes in and try and get a Miesha a little streak going and build up a story, to get going on that?"



Follis said that matchmaking isn’t black and white. There are a lot of factors that play into a fight coming together, ranging from timing to fan intrigue.



"So much of this sport has to do with who’s best, and so much has to do with what’s marketable," he said. "And so, we trust that — well one, we got the belt, so we’re fighting someone. And it’s for the title. So for us, we’re kind of looking at it, we think we’re ready for a fight, a rematch with Ronda. We thought we were ready prior. I mean, we were looking forward to that. We were preparing, and we’d been working on growth, and we think we’ve got what it takes to win that fight."



Tate was originally promised a title shot with Rousey after defeating Jessica Eye in July of last year. In the end the UFC opted to go with Holly Holm, who knocked out Rousey at UFC 193 in Melbourne this past November. Now that Tate has complicated things a bit at 135 pounds by dethroning Holm, Follis says he wouldn’t mind giving her an immediate rematch either.



"After this fight with Holly, I think we’ll be better next time," he told Ariel Helwani. "I’m sure they’ll make adjustments, but if we fight her again, I think now we understand what her game is and how it works. I think we can make some adjustments and be even more aggressive in there and pull that off.



"But I think Amanda Nunes is looking very tough, and if we got a chance to fight here we’d be happy about that too. For me, once you get the belt it’s kind of irrelative. You’ve got to fight who gets put in front of you, and I really think that Miesha has the ability to beat anyone of those three. We’d be happy to see any one of them come up."



One thing Follis doesn’t particularly want to do is wait until mid-fall to book a fight, which was Rousey’s original timetable for a return. Similar to how Holm wanted to stay busy, Follis said he’d rather see Tate defend her belt sooner rather than later.



"I’d rather not wait, personally," he said. "We may or may not have a say in that, but personally — they wanted Holly to wait, and there’s always that second guessing of, oh, you should have waited. But I love Holly’s spirit. I have the most respect for her and her camp. I mean, and she said it like, hey, I’m here to fight, I want to fight the best and I want to get out there.



"And I think Miesha really feels the same way. It’s like hey, we’ve got the belt. Let’s take a little time off, enjoy it, go do some media, and then let’s get back to work and go get back in that cage. I think there’s a piece of inactivity that most fighters would agree the longer you sit it out it’s not good. It’s hard to stay motivated for a fighter who’s used to having a competition to prepare for."



What would be the ideal time for Tate to make her first title defense? If Follis had his way, it would be at the big hallmark event that’s planned for July, against whoever is ready at that moment.



"Me personally, I would love to see her get a fight at [UFC] 200," he said. "Let’s line that up. Let’s put Amanda Nunes in there. She wants it. We want it. If Holly’s ready, let’s go do that. And that’s just me as a coach. We have a management team. Obviously there’s a guy named Dana White who has a huge say in this. So, really, if you ask what my opinion is, I would love to see her fight. But we’ll have to wait and see what happens.