After her 48 second loss at UFC 207, a lot of the talk was mostly about Ronda Rousey’s training situation and whether she was getting proper coaching. UFC commentators Jon Anik and Kenny Florian gave some insight about what they found out about her preparations, saying that Rousey didn’t spar much during the lead up to the bout.
“My understanding is that perhaps Rousey didn’t really spar leading up to this fight,” Florian said on their podcast. “I get that they’re trying to preserve her from not getting hurt. But you’ve got to have some rounds. You’ve got to ready for the worst case scenario, which is Amanda Nunes striking with you. She wasn’t able to move her head, do anything defensively to avoid the striking skills of Amanda Nunes, and really paid for it.”
“If she didn’t spar at all, as we heard rumblings about after the fight, that’s probably indefensible,” Anik said about the situation. “We so applaud and laud people for scaling back their sparring, but you still have to do it to some extent.”
Florian went on to say that Rousey needs to change coaches.
“Combat is such an interesting thing. You see how quickly it can evolve. If you do not keep up with it, we see it time and time again, you will be left behind,” Florian said. “For Rousey I think she is a tremendous talent, she did so many amazing things in this sport, but I think she is loyal to a fault.
“I like Edmond. I spoke to him in various occassions, but he doesn’t have the experience for high level mixed martial arts. That’s my opinion. He hasn’t been keeping up with it.
“I just think she needs a knowledgeable, experienced coach, wherever that is,” he said. “She’s going to need much better coaching, and a much better team around her. That’s for sure.”
According to the former UFC fighter turned analyst and color commentator, Rousey still matches up well with a lot of the other fighters, but it’s concerning that she didn’t show much improvement in terms of skills.
“Nothing was working for her. She wasn’t moving her head. Her hands started dropping. She was running right into very big shots,” Florian said.
“She had 411 days to improve as a striker, and unfortunately for her, just wasn’t able to get it done. There really was no difference in what she did agianst Holly Holm. There was no head movement. There was no variety, There were no angles.
“She still needs to improve, overall. Even if we take out striking, what about developing skills in getting to the clinch safely? Something as basic as that, was not done! For me, as someone who has been in Mixed Martial Arts a long time, that’s just a very basic skill, and she didn’t do that. There were no level changes, no leg attacks as far as dropping to try and get a single or a double leg. That really concerned me.”
UPDATE: Rousey’s camp contacted Florian about this:
Although we heard that Ronda didn’t spar in preparation for Nunes, Ronda’s camp informed me she had 4 different quality sparring partners.
— Kenny Florian (@kennyflorian) January 3, 2017
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