Former UFC title challenger Dan Hardy feels Ronda Rousey’s team “let her down” following her KO loss to Holly Holm in November 2015.
Prior to UFC 189 in November 2015 “Rowdy” was one of the sports world’s biggest stars. To gain a little perspective, the unbeaten UFC women’s bantamweight champion of the world was named “the most dominant athlete alive” by Business Insider.
11 of Ronda Rousey’s twelve opponents up until the Holm loss had been dispatched in one round, the other (Miesha Tate) survived until the 3rd round of their championship fight, only to eventually fall victim to Rousey’s trademark armbar. It is safe to say that Rousey was as big a star as they come, but what goes up must come down. In Rousey’s case, the descent was rapid.
According to former UFC welterweight and now MMA analyst Dan Hardy, the 30 year old former champion did not deal with the loss the way a champion should, and her team should be held accountable for the way with which the loss to Holm was handled (via Yahoo Sports).
“When someone is watching an MMA fight, they are watching the person getting beaten up. If you are speaking to a fighter, they are watching the person winning the fight. We don’t see the person losing because we [as fighters] don’t visualise yourself as that person.
“After you have been knocked out, all of a sudden you start focusing on the person who is losing the fight. Unless you can start rewiring that in your head and start realising that you have the skills to be the person on top winning the fight, then it can burden you and it can slow you down. I think that is what effected Ronda going into her last fight. I don’t think she has ever really faced her knockout loss to Holly Holm and it doesn’t bode well for a fighter of her calibre and fame.”
While Ronda Rousey should have addressed the loss to Holm, and ensured that the same mistakes were not made against Nunes, there was nothing to indicate in her last fight that she had made reasonable adjustments. Hardy points the finger at Rousey’s coach Edmond Tarverdyan and the team she had around her, for failing to employ the necessary gameplan which would have seen Rousey completely recovered and prepared for her return:
“That should have been something her coach pulled her to one side over, they should have sat down, they should have watched it [the Holm fight] 10 or 15 times and talked it through over and over again until she was sick of watching it. My knockout loss to Carlos Condit, it doesn’t bother me anymore because I can see the reasons why it happened. I can see the mistakes I made. But if you don’t address it, you don’t see those mistakes and you don’t learn from them.”
“Questions were asked about Ronda’s boxing skills and I think we got those answers in her last two fights. I think she needs better striking. She possibly needs to find a better striking coach, Edmund has had a lot of criticism in the way he dealt with Ronda over the last two fights and I think that is fair.
And as for the future of Rousey in the UFC, Hardy is uncertain:
“You have got to think where Ronda is at in her career, she is one of the most famous people in sport. So for her to step out of her inner circle and so find somebody else to work with is very difficult for her. She is relying on the people that are already around her and I feel they have let her down.”
