(Now that your faith has been proven, young padawan, your final test will require you to reach deep into your subconscious and unlock the last 4 digits and security code of your credit card… via Getty)
Loyalty: Ain’t it a bitch? In some circles, it’s the measure of a man’s (or woman’s) character. In others, the lack of it can be spotted like a snake in the grass. Those who roll together, well, roll together, I guess you could say.
Take Ronda Rousey and her coach, Edmond Tarverdyan, for instance. Without ever having met the guy, the general consensus on him seems to be that he’s not all that great a person. Ronda’s mother hates him, for starters (like, “wouldn’t piss on him were he on fire” hates), and his sketchy credit history/current legal troubles doesn’t exactly paint him as a what you’d call an honest person. As a coach, there’s also the glaring fact that, until she was knocked out by Holly Holm at UFC 193, Ronda Rousey was the *only* UFC fighter to achieve success under his tutelage.
But despite all of this, despite the fact that she won’t even be able to eat an apple for another six months, Rousey let us all know in a recent interview that no, there is no way in Hell she is leaving Tarverdyan’s side at Glendale Fight Club.
“Of course I’m staying [with coach Tarverdyan],” Rousey told ESPN. “That’s my mom’s opinion, not mine.”
Holm must be ecstatic.
But really, it’s too soon for any of us to say that Rousey’s decision is definitively wrong, easy as it may seem. Maybe Tarverdyan has the kind of coaching style that works perfect for Rousey and simply not for anyone else. Maybe his insistence that Ronda was “doing beautifully” in between the first and second rounds of her UFC 193 title fight after we all saw her get absolutely tooled by Holm for five minutes was some kind of psychological trick designed to get her mind back on track. Maybe the banks all botched some paperwork and have him confused with Edward Targowski, the Scottish prosecutor turned Queen’s Council in 1989*, which seems like an easy enough mistake to make.
In any case, Ronda Rousey doesn’t owe us an explanation for her ceaseless loyalty, because it’s not like she looks for that in others, if the rumors have any truth to them. So we say bravo, Ronda! You may or may not get your teeth permanently shattered in the rematch, but at least no one will be able to call you a snake in the grass through a thick Irish accent. And really, that’s what matters most at the end of the day.
*That joke took a lot of effort and research, dammit, so you better appreciate it.
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