Rousey: I’m staying with my coach
Ronda Rousey after the loss to Holly Holm: “Of course I’m staying (with coach Edmond Tarverdyan). That’s my mom’s opinion, not mine.”
When UFC women’s bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey lost her title to Holly Holm, the calls for her to find a better coach than Edmond Tarverdyan increased. Her mother had long called for her to sever the relationship, using the most blunt language in memory.
“I hate him. I would run over him with my car in there wasn’t a law against it,” said Ronda’s mom recently. “I HATE that guy. He’s like the most worthless human being God ever put on this Earth.”
And Ronda’s mother is Dr. AnnMaria De Mars, the first American to win gold at the world Judo Championship, and a 6th degree black belt in Judo. Her words have weight.
And that was before Ronda lost.
After the loss the calls were widespread. Some of them were relatively gentle.
“Maybe she should listen to her mother a little more,” said Bellator featherweight GeorgiKarakhanyan, who formerly trained at Glendale Fighting Club, and has worked with a number of people in Rousey’s camp, including at times ‘Rowdy’ herself.
Others were less reserved.
“I hate that guy,” said UFC middleweight Tim Kennedy, as transcribed by MMAFighting. “I think he’s a jerk. I also think he’s a terrorist sympathizer.”
“There was coaching and then there was whatever happened with Ronda. I don’t want to diminish that word and call it coaching because that’s not what happened in Ronda’s corner.”
However, Rousey recently did an extended interview with Ramona Shelburne forESPN The Magazine, and reported that Tarverdyan will not be fired.
“I’ve been in that situation myself, so maybe it makes it a little different for me than the average mom,” says De Mars. “I came home empty-handed not once but twice. I hurt my knee and I was in the middle of getting divorced. It was horrible, horrible, horrible. I cried for days. Then I went and won the world championships six weeks later.”
Ronda’s mom retired a long time ago, but she can still kick some ass. There are times the tough love seems too tough, but this has been their dynamic forever. “Well, both of us are definitely stubborn, and both of us definitely think we’re right all the time,” De Mars says.
Before the fight, De Mars went public with her disdain for Tarverdyan. She doesn’t think he’s teaching her the right things, in the right way. She thinks her daughter should play to her strengths as a judoka, rather than focus on striking. She wishes he’d push her harder, make her uncomfortable sometimes. She’s troubled by his recent bankruptcy filing.
“It wouldn’t be the first time she disagreed with where I was training or what I was doing or who I was getting coached by,” Rousey said a few weeks before the fight. “If anything it’s almost like normal at this point for us to have disagreements about my training and coaches. We’re both athletes. We both fought. I just have a different personality. The same things that work for her won’t work for me.”
De Mars didn’t fly to Australia for the fight.
“I told Ronda I am not going to go because I love you more than winning,” she says. “I did not think she was in the right place, and I couldn’t pretend any longer that I thought she was.”
After the loss, her opinion hardened. She thought her daughter looked unprepared and fought the wrong fight.
“People let her down,” she says.
Rousey isn’t budging.
“Of course I’m staying [with Tarverdyan],” Rousey says. “That’s my mom’s opinion, not mine.”
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“We didn’t create this in one day, and it’s not going to be taken away from us, from me, from her, from anybody in one day,” Tarverdyan says. “Whatever happens in her career or in her life, we didn’t do all this S— for it to be taken away from us. In life, things are going to be taken away from you. But we always believe in each other. We’re strong next to each other. Being united and being strong helps you get through a lot in this world.”
