UFC Heavyweight Travis Browne recently discussed his loyalty to his coach Edmund Tarverdyan.
Browne thinks Tarverdyan has received an unfair amount of criticism following the recent losses of the UFC fighters he coaches, including himself and former UFC Women’s Bantamweight Champion Ronda Rousey.
“I think it’s easy to judge from the outside,” Browne said. “Anybody that I’ve ever had in camp, to work with me as a training partner, they are always like, ‘Man, Edmund knows what he’s talking about.’ He has a great fight IQ and he has great coaching. It’s about the athletes going out there and performing. Every coach has lost. Every champion, with the exclusion of Jon Jones, has lost. Why didn’t the community come down on those coaches? Where was everybody then? Why are you singling him out? It isn’t fair.”
Browne went on to talk about why he chose to go to Tarverdyan for coaching and why he has struggled in his recent fights.
“So speaking for myself, I went to Edmund to work on specifically footwork and my hands,” Browne said. “Now it was up to me, during my fights, to work on my kicks, and grappling, and stuff like that. That was just something that I, for whatever reason, wasn’t at the front of my mind. I think now after I’ve had a tough year, after a year like this, I need to sit back. I’ve developed these skills, how do I incorporate them now into like the full scope of what I’m able to do. I think what was happening is that I go to a certain point that was pretty high in the rankings based solely off of athletic ability. I really didn’t have any coach that was like, ‘yes, that’s my student.’ I got a lot of my coaching from a lot of my training partners. They are high-level training partners, you had Phil Davis, Brandon Vera, Jon Jones, even Andrei Arlovski, guys who were in the gym.
“I think what was happening is that I go to a certain point that was pretty high in the rankings based solely off of athletic ability. I really didn’t have any coach that was like, ‘yes, that’s my student.’ I got a lot of my coaching from a lot of my training partners. They are high-level training partners, you had Phil Davis, Brandon Vera, Jon Jones, even Andrei Arlovski, guys who were in the gym. Yes, I had coaches, they were good coaches, I’m not saying they were bad coaches, but I never really learned how to fight technically. So I felt I got to a certain spot in my career based on my athletic ability, and I wanted to learn specifics of the sport.
“So I went to Edmund and started learning specifics of the sport, but then, in my own mind, I look back now, I started to depend too much on my skill level and not use my athletic ability. So now I’m sitting here after the Werdum fight thinking, ‘What the hell is going on?’ I need to go back to being athletic as I’m going to be but also using the skill set that I’ve learned over the years and incorporating it all.”
Browne is scheduled to headline an upcoming UFC Fight Night event on Feb. 19 in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. He is scheduled to fight heavyweight prospect Derrick Lewis, who is on a five-fight win streak in the UFC.
