UFC 207: Nunes vs. Rousey (12/30/2016) - Las Vegas, NV (T-Mobile Arena)

[Elsalvajeloco]

1 hour ago, TheVileOne said:

Travis Browne did leave Greg Jackson to train with Taverdyan.

Ok and....

[supremebve]

On 1/1/2017 at 6:20 PM, TheVileOne said:

Travis Browne did leave Greg Jackson to train with Taverdyan.

If Ronda Rousey was giving me the booty, I'd leave Greg Jackson to train with Flava Flav.  That shit don't count.

[Elsalvajeloco]

1 hour ago, supremebve said:

If Ronda Rousey was giving me the booty, I'd leave Greg Jackson to train with Flava Flav.  That shit don't count.

Browne didn't join Glendale Fight Club while he was dating Rousey. He was fooled into believing Edmond made significant improvements to her to striking, and he felt like he was in a slump after the first Werdum fight. Hence, why he left. They didn't start messing with each other until maybe 6-8 months later. He joined GFC to train for Schaub (who Edmond turned away from joining GFC), and that started a mini feud between her future BF and her ex beau.

This is some Love and Hip Hop shit that I didn't want to explain because it's sad that I even know this.

[supremebve]

2 minutes ago, Elsalvajeloco said:

Browne didn't join Glendale Fight Club while he was dating Rousey. He was fooled into believing Edmond made significant improvements to her to striking, and he felt like he was in a slump after the first Werdum fight. Hence, why he left. They didn't start messing with each other until maybe 6-8 months later. He joined GFC to train for Schaub (who Edmond turned away from joining GFC), and that started a mini feud between her future BF and her ex beau.

This is some Love and Hip Hop shit that I didn't want to explain because it's sad that I even know this.

I was just trying to tell these jokes.

I honestly don't know what percentage of the blame needs to go to her and her training.  It is possible that Taverdyan is a decent coach(I doubt it) but she may have no aptitude for striking.  She is a great athlete and an exceptional judoka, but she seems to be clueless when it comes to striking.  She looks great hitting pads, but as soon as she gets hit she shuts down.  It is so hard to tell if it is her or the training.  Whatever it is, she needs to either fix it or retire, because she has no clue what to do defensively.

[Elsalvajeloco]

56 minutes ago, supremebve said:

I was just trying to tell these jokes.

I honestly don't know what percentage of the blame needs to go to her and her training.  It is possible that Taverdyan is a decent coach(I doubt it) but she may have no aptitude for striking.  She is a great athlete and an exceptional judoka, but she seems to be clueless when it comes to striking.  She looks great hitting pads, but as soon as she gets hit she shuts down.  It is so hard to tell if it is her or the training.  Whatever it is, she needs to either fix it or retire, because she has no clue what to do defensively.

I was looking at Josh Koscheck's record the other day when Paul Daley brought him up on the Bellator conference call. Koscheck was a good fighter until he became so envious of what strikers can do. It's different when you're making improvements in striking and going against a Yoshiyuki Yoshida, who was a solid to good submission grappler but middle of the road at best everywhere else. Once you're up against people who know how to do it for real, that's when your career goes on a tremendous slide. And Koscheck had a person like Javier Mendez, who is well versed and has trained multiple champions in MMA. 

I don't even think it's a Tito Ortiz thing where you look good hitting the pads with Saul Soliz or Don House, and then Chuck Liddell is smashing your face into next week five minutes later. Tito got beat up in a lot of fights, but he still wrestled enough and got people to the ground to win fights as well. There were points where his striking didn't look all that bad. If you're a judoka and you're walking in cold to a fight that's starting on the feet against a striker, any initial approach that isn't clinch and takedown is a not a good strategy. If you did that against a Julia Budd three or four years earlier, then why is it so complicated now? I don't care how well you drew up alternate Plan B and Plan C strategies, that is your method to victory. You should only strike when it's applicable.

The reason why I said she can't accept less than 50% of the blame is at the end of the day, it's still just her in the cage. You have to have the wherewithal to overrule someone's dumbass strategy. Even if you feel confident you can pull off the techniques, common sense strategy got you to being a world champion in the first place. She can't have an ordinary teacher-pupil relationship with someone who is not a great teacher. An example I would use in this scenario is Roy Jones Jr's relationship with Alton Merkerson. I don't think Merkerson was a bad trainer, but he inherited one of the greatest natural athletes in combat sports history (with or without the steroids). Roy Jones Jr. was beating up grown men in sparring when he was 15 or 16 years old. Short of his life falling apart ala Tony Ayala, he was going to be a P4P fighter at some point. All Merkerson had to do was keep the train on the tracks. I remember when Roy was fighting Thulani Malinga right after he beat Hopkins for the IBF middleweight title. Roy was controlling the fight as expected. Roy gets back to the corner and sits down on the stool in between rounds. Accidently, Merkerson kinda violently rips Roy's mouthpiece out and almost cuts the inside of Roy's mouth. Your average boxer or MMA fighter is going to just shake that off and just listen intently to the instructions for the next round. No...not Roy Jones Jr. He curses up a storm and chews out Merkerson for most of the time in between rounds. Merkerson, who is much older than Roy, is apologizing like a young busboy making minimum wage and can't afford to lose his job. Then, RJJ goes back out and proceeds to whoop Malinga's ass. My point isn't that Roy was a dick to his elder and trainer, but there was a clear hierarchy in that relationship. Merkerson ain't Eddie Futch. He ain't Cus D'Amato either. He's fortunate Roy chose him to be his coach in the pro ranks and allows him to benefit from his cut provided by Roy's paychecks. He is there for two reasons: First, to help stroke Roy's ego and tell him the things to do he was already going to do in the first place. Second, he has gotta be there because you need a chief second. It can be your mom (in the case of Denis Douglin) or your kid, but somebody has got to be there to carry your spare mouthpiece, scissors, vasoline, and water. That's all Alton Merkerson was there for.

Ronda Rousey is talented enough to do that w/ Edmond because it worked already and female MMA hasn't grown enough for that not to work anymore. However, if the goal is true growth as an MMA fighter, then Edmond Tarverdyan ain't the man for the job. There is no way around that. I dunno how many shots to the face Rousey has to absorb to realize that.

[supremebve]

I don't disagree with anything you just said, but I still think there is a mental block with her that I don't know if another coach will be able to get past.  She took one punch to the face and then just stood there and got pummeled.  It didn't occur to her to move her head, feet, cover up with her hands, throw punches back, run away, or anything else.  She stood there like keeping up her basic boxing stance would be all she needed to do to defend herself from Nunes' strikes.  As bad as Taverdyan is as a trainer, I can't believe that they didn't drill how to move your feet, head, and adjust your boxing stance.  She just couldn't access that information once the fight started.  Her camp is a problem, but not nearly as big of a problem as forgetting all of your defensive training as soon as the fight starts.  That is a problem that may be impossible to fix.

[Jiji]

Kenny Florian said she did next to no sparring, which wouldn't help with the above. They refuted that, of course, but it sounds like if there was sparring, it was very light and maybe that first Nunes jab was the first time she was hit in anger in the past 13 months or whatever.

[OSJ]

I don't want to over-simplify things, but there are two kinds of fighters, those that can get hit and recover from it and those that are essentially finished after getting hit hard once or twice. It seems pretty apparent which group Ronda belongs in.

[Elsalvajeloco]

24 minutes ago, supremebve said:

I don't disagree with anything you just said, but I still think there is a mental block with her that I don't know if another coach will be able to get past.  She took one punch to the face and then just stood there and got pummeled.  It didn't occur to her to move her head, feet, cover up with her hands, throw punches back, run away, or anything else.  She stood there like keeping up her basic boxing stance would be all she needed to do to defend herself from Nunes' strikes.  As bad as Taverdyan is as a trainer, I can't believe that they didn't drill how to move your feet, head, and adjust your boxing stance.  She just couldn't access that information once the fight started.  Her camp is a problem, but not nearly as big of a problem as forgetting all of your defensive training as soon as the fight starts.  That is a problem that may be impossible to fix.

Part of Tarverdyan's job is to be there to help stop those regressions. It would be different if this was a short notice camp against a fighter there isn't much tape on. You can't really plan around that. However, they had an ample amount of time to develop a rational and reasonable strategy against a fighter who is/was as flawed as Ronda was.

Lack of sparring (or intense sparring) does make sense because the last thing you're going to do probably is put Rousey in there and make it feel like she's going another round w/ Holly Holm. However, as much as anyone can make sparring seem like an evil and unnecessary way to prepare for fights, bringing in a female boxer or kickboxer to simulate Nunes is the only way to prepare for someone like Nunes. You can bring in Diana Prazak and Jemyma Betrian for other fights, but not for Amanda Nunes? There are even enough good female MMA fighters to do that same job. 

Either way, it doesn't make sense for her to be in closed quarters with Amanda Nunes and trying to trade hooks like she's fighting Micky Ward or Arturo Gatti in the mid 00s. That doesn't sound like a mental block. That looks like you're trying to do a 180 from what made you successful.

[TheVileOne]

1.5 million viewers average and peak 1.8 million viewers for the FS1 prelims.  Postfight show had 404,000 viewers. Prefight show had 572,000 viewers.