Coming out of Ronda Rousey’s devastating loss to Holly Holm at UFC 193 in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, a lot of criticism has been heaped upon her head coach. Edmond Tarverdyan. Going into the fight, there was already a lot of questioning of his coaching acumen, thanks in large part to a series of videos where Rousey’s mother (former world champion judoka AnnMaria De Mars) ripped Tarverdyan, and it only got worse. Rousey appeared to be completely ill-equipped to fight someone who could outstrike her, much less one big and strong enough to not get bullied in the cage. Worse, after Holm lit up Rousey for almost the entirety of the first round, Tarverdyan showered her with praise in the corner about how great she was doing.
Tarverdyan has finally spoken out about the criticism in an interview with ESPN. He told Brett Okamoto that”It was the biggest loss of my career. You know you won’t ever want that to happen again. So what that means is, I’ve got to work harder. Every little thing I’ve got to be honest with and make sure that we’re ready to go.” That last sentence is interesting in light of him being under investigation for tax evasion and recently having his second’s license suspended in California for lying on his application.
Then the interview gets a bit weird:
Yeah, there was a lot of criticism afterwards about adding a boxing coach. MMA is not a boxing game, but Ronda got caught, and we will be taking advice from boxing trainers. I don’t think it’s going to be a situation about adding a boxing coach, it’s about getting more thoughts from boxing trainers. I will be speaking to them and getting in the best advice. And if I feel it’s necessary we will bring them in. But besides boxing, even the wrestling, the judo, the grappling aspect of it — just approaching the fight in general, there will be a bit of things that we could add. We’re not going to sit here and change everything that we’ve done, we’ve done stuff that I think is working, it’s been great. We’re not going to have something so much different for Ronda. Have we been doing everything wrong? No, that’s not the situation. It’s a fight, Ronda got caught with a shot, and it was a little bit of a roller coaster from there.
The first thing that jumps out is that Tarverdyan IS a boxing coach who purportedly trained Vic Darchinyan at one point. This SHOULD be his wheelhouse. So why is he now saying that boxing coaches are the people who he should consult? Combine that with how h’s mostly speaking in generalities, and it reads like he’s obfuscating. He also claims that “A lot of people might think Ronda didn’t move her head when she was moving forward and she got popped with a shot. Ronda does know how to move her head. Ronda moved her head and avoided a lot of short, stocky straight shots, and she got into a beautiful clinch.” If you’ve seen the fight, then you remember that Holm’s left straight was the punch that Rousey had the most trouble with.
It’s worth reading the whole article and watching the video on the ESPN site. He talks about how Rousey has made adjustments after fights in the past, like trying to avoid giving up her back after Liz Carmouche got her in a face crank.
