Former teammate: Ronda Rousey needs to change her coaches

When Ronda Rousey lost to Holly Holm at UFC 193 back in November of 2015, a lot of fingers were pointed in regards to who should shoulder the blame for Rousey’s loss. With this, many fingers ended up pointed at Rousey’s head coach, Edmond Tarverdyan, who many believe gave Rousey a false sense of security in her striking leading up to the fight with arguably the best striker in the women’s division, Holly Holm.

Following the loss, several members of the combat sports community, including Floyd Mayweather, offered to train Rousey on her boxing. Despite that, when it was announced that Rousey would be returning to the Octagon at UFC 207 to fight Amanda Nunes, Ronda Rousey returned to Glendale Fighting Club to train under Edmond Tarverdyan.

The way Rousey’s former Judo teammate Kayla Harrison sees it, if Rousey wants to get back to winning, she needs to get back with old coaches.

She spoke to TMZ:

“I think she has a lot of people maybe around her that don’t necessarily have Ronda’s best interest at heart,” Harrison told TMZ on Wednesday. “I think she needs to take a good, hard look at that and maybe go back to day one, maybe go back to her family, maybe go back to her original coaches who helped her be successful, and say, ‘okay, I really know these people do care about me. Not as a fighter, not as a money-making machine, not as an actress, not as a celebrity. But as Ronda.’

“She just needs to know that the people who truly care about her are going to be there no matter what happens. I mean, God forbid I ever lose or if I had lost the Olympics, I think the people who love me would still love me whether I would have won or lost. And she should know that. I think she needs to be surrounded by those people at this time. I think she really needs to do some soul searching. I think she needs to figure out what it is that she wants to do in her life, and she wants to accomplish, and what really makes Ronda happy.”

“I really expected her to come back with a vengeance and to come back bigger and better than ever,” Harrison said. “But I’m not with her now, so I don’t know what her training has been like, where her mind was at. When I talked to her a couple of weeks ago, she seemed good about it, but I think one thing I would have done differently is not have her fight for the title right away, you know?