An excerpt taken from UFC Bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey’s book, “My Fight/ Your Fight,” has gained a reaction from one of her mentors, Judo coach Jason Morris.
Morris worked with Rousey for eight months in New York which went as far as accommodating the now popular UFC fighter to sleep on a futon in his living room.
“I was training under a coach I couldn’t stand and who was taking my money,” Rousey wrote in her book. “I was starving. I was not improving. ‘What the (expletive) am I doing here?’ I asked myself out loud.”
Coach Morris has yet to read the book and took the negative feedback in stride. In fact, he says that he would take the indirect and free advertising anytime for the school.
Morris was also one of Rousey’s mentors when the UFC champion was part of the Judo team that participated in the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. And he believes that despite the feedback, he did his best to give Rousey what she was looking for.
“I’m a judo coach,” said Morris. “I do the best I can, and (Rousey) came to me. I didn’t seek her out. She wanted expert training, and I did the best I could at that time.”
The Glennville coach revealed as well how Rousey arrived at his academy, saying that while Rousey carried the competitive spirit that people see today, there was nothing remarkable about her at that time.
Morris said that Rousey was raw and that there were a lot of room where she could improve on when she first came to him. To sum it all up, Morris said that Rousey was just an average teenage kid who was kind of sloppy.
“The reality is she owes her entire existence to our sport,” Morris said. “Not to me or any one person. The judo community raised her, and this is why she’s so successful.”
Rousey is undoubtedly one of the big stars in the UFC these days and has been appearing in various Hollywood films such as Expendables 3, Furious 7 and Entourage.
Good or bad, Rousey has indeed risen to new heights despite a past which she considers as forgettable. Despite all that, Morris seems to have a point that Rousey should not forget where she came from and what made her to be.
Rousey returns to action this coming August 1, 2015 in UFC 190. She will be going up against Bethe Correia in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil as she defends her UFC Women’s Bantamweight Championship.