UFC women’s bantamweight champion Miesha Tate keeps her title perched in front of her vanity mirror, a little reminder of what she’s accomplished when she wakes up.

For many years, she told people she could be the champion. Now, the gold does the talking.

“It feels damn good to walk around with the belt,” Tate told MMAjunkie.

Only six months ago, the 29-year-old Washington native was considering retirement after being passed over for a title shot despite a four-fight winning streak. Then now-former champ Ronda Rousey suffered a knockout loss to Holly Holm this past November at UFC 193, creating a path for Tate to challenge for the title.

Tate was down on scorecards against Holm at UFC 196 until she secured a final-round submission and put the champ to sleep. There’s, of course, no more thinking about retirement.

Tate earlier this month inked new a multi-year contract with the UFC. She declined to give many details about her new deal, but she said she is “very happy” and plans to stay with the promotion until she retires.

“It’s one thing to believe you can, and it’s another thing once you’ve done it,” Tate said. “Once you’ve done it, you feel so much more confident. I believed I could, but I’ve proven it to the rest of the world. So it just puts you on this elevated level of confidence.

“I’m still going to be grounded in all of this, for sure, but I just really believe in myself, and it feels good to see the rest of the world believe what I’ve been saying the whole time, that I knew I was capable of this.”

While Tate (18-5 MMA, 5-2 UFC) is currently scheduled to defend her title at July 9’s UFC 200 pay-per-view event in Las Vegas against surging Amanda Nunes (11-4 MMA, 4-1 UFC), who’s won her past four bouts, Tate said she is more confident than ever that a second fight with Holm (10-1 MMA, 3-1 UFC) would be different. With the last fight largely weighted toward Holm until the final round, Tate thinks she could have been more efficient.

“I have nothing but respect for her,” Tate said of the deposed champ. “She was a very tough opponent, but I’m even more confident going into a second fight because I didn’t push the pace on the ground when I got her on the ground, and now I feel very confident that I could have caught her sooner. So I think I would get a submission a lot earlier in a rematch, if that were to happen.”

That probably sounds like good news for Holm and her camp, who pushed for an immediate rematch and criticized the new titleholder for accepting a fight with Nunes, a charge Tate said is misdirected.

“(Holm) said from the very beginning, ‘I want to be an active champion, and I don’t want to wait for Ronda,’” Tate said. “So she was doing what she wanted, and I was the girl next in line, so that’s what she had to do.

“Now, I have beaten Holly, I’ve finished Holly, and now I want to fight the next girl in line. Now, I’m giving Amanda that chance, if you want to look at it that way.”

Before she accepted the bout with Nunes, Tate was expected to meet longtime rival Rousey (10-1 MMA, 6-1 UFC), who’s twice beaten her in the UFC and now-defunct Strikeforce, for a third time. The booking didn’t materialize, with Rousey still regrouping after her knockout loss to Holm. Tate said everyone will eventually get her chance.

For a while, she was worried that might not be the case with her career. But this time, she was happy to be proven wrong.

For more on UFC 200, check out the UFC Rumors section of the site.