Amanda Nunes Coach Din Thomas: 'There's Still Hope for Ronda Rousey' | MMAWeekly.com

Former UFC featherweight Din Thomas, and currently one of champion Amanda Nunes’ coaches, believes Ronda Rousey could rise again with changes in training. Thomas didn’t jump on the tidal wave of criticism toward Rousey’s coach, Edmond Tarverdyan, after her first-round loss to Nunes at UFC 207.

“Everybody has been criticizing her coach. I don’t really know enough about him to really criticize him. But what I do know is that he’s not a progressive thinker,” said Thomas while appearing on the UFC Unfiltered podcast.

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While Thomas withheld deeper criticism of Tarverdyan, he does think Rousey needs to move away from her current training situation.

“I think if she gets with the right person there’s still hope for her, do that transition of being able to punch and use her grappling skills. There’s no doubt about it, she’s a really good grappler and she’s really good at Judo. But she has to be able to get inside. There’s obviously a misconnection between how she punches and how she can grab you. She doesn’t do that very well,” he said.

Some have called for Rousey to retire, but Thomas believes there’s still some fight left in “Rowdy.”

“I think Ronda could still have some fight left in her, but she needs to get with a progressive thinker. I don’t know if this guy is a bad boxing coach or anything like that. But he’s not a progressive enough thinker for a person like Ronda. You can’t train her to box the way that she’s boxing and have success with her style,” said Thomas.

After the loss, Rousey released a statement saying that she was going to take some time to reflect and think about her future.

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