Ever since Ronda Rousey lost her first MMA fight back in November of 2016, people have been bagging on her coach Edmond Tarverdyan. Some didn’t even wait for her to lose. Ronda’s own mother and former world judo champion Dr. AnnMaria De Mars never minced words when talking about Tarverdyan, calling him ‘an idiot and a fraud’ and ‘the most worthless human being God ever put on this Earth.’
Those are strong words, but what else can you say when you think someone is running your daughter’s potential right into the ground? And with Ronda’s second loss to champ Amanda Nunes at UFC 207 coming via a series of completely undefended strikes, we imagine the pressure for Rousey to switch camps (if she even plans on continuing to fight, a huge question) will only grow. Even Nunes piled on at the UFC 207 post event press conference, blaming Tarverdyan for training Rousey wrong.
“She thinks she is a boxer,” Nunes said with the bantamweight belt by her side and a smile on her face. “He [Edmond] put this thing in her head, and make the girl believe in that. I don’t know why he did that. She had great judo. She could’ve gone more forward in this division, but he put that crazy thing about boxing in there, and her career started going down.”
After winning the fight, Amanda Nunes made it a point to cross the Octagon and shush an emotional Tarverdyan through the cage. Nunes later admitted to the press it was to show him he’d made a mistake having Ronda try to strike with her.
“I knew she was going to strike with me because her boxing coach, he told her she had good striking,” she said. “When I went in there, I’m the real striker here. I wanted to look at him and say that.”
With Nunes cutting through Rousey’s defenses like a hot knife in butter and defeating her in under a minute, there’s really no doubt now who the real striker is now. The question is what Ronda Rousey plans to do about it. Will she stick around and try to prove she’s still got what it takes? And if she does, will she stay with her coach Edmond Tarverdyan, who had over a year to close the gaping holes in Ronda’s striking game but didn’t seem to accomplish much?