My Fight / Your Fight (23 page)

Darin was silent.

“So you understand why I'm skeptical?” my mom asked yet again.

Darin nodded.

“And what do you get out of all this?” my mom asked him.

“I just want to see Ronda succeed,” he said.

“Do you have a contract?”

“We have an agreement,” he said. “But if Ronda is ever not happy with the job I'm doing, I'll just walk away.”

My mom narrowed her eyes.

“It's not about business,” Darin said. “Ronda is like family to me.”

“Business is always about business,” my mom said, then turned to me. “And I've found the only people who are like family are your actual family. Look, if this is something you really want to do, you can do it, but you're doing it on your own. I'll give you a year. That's it. One year.”

Joy surged through me. I did a happy dance in my brain. It was the closest I was going to get to her approval. It wasn't complete acceptance, but it would do.

When we had finished eating, Darin made a big show of paying the check.

“Well, Leo, it was nice to meet you,” my mom said.

“One year,” she said to me.

She gave Darin a once-over and said nothing.

She called me later that night.

“Hey Mom, what's up?”

“One year,” she said, skipping over any salutation. “And I don't trust that Darin guy.”

This is really happening
, I thought.

This was my dream, and my mom was giving me a chance to pursue it even if she didn't really believe in it. I was OK with that.

If people don't believe you when you say something, then you have to prove it. I promised her I would prove her wrong.

When I am looking for a coach, I shop around. It is a lot like dating. Sometimes you might meet a great guy, but he's just not the one for you. When you find the right coach, something clicks. It just feels right. If you don't have that feeling, you don't have the right coach.

Fighters have to search for a coach with potential, just the way coaches have to search for fighters with potential. After all, it's a relationship you build over time.

I believe it's very important for a person to stick with consistent coaching throughout a career instead of bouncing around. Over time you develop a rapport and a way of communicating. Coaching is all about communication and being able to get information from one person to another fairly quickly. If you can find all these things in one person, you'll have a long, happy life together.

When I made the transition to MMA, I knew I could submit anyone on the planet. Striking was a different story. I'm sure it's that way with any career change. You bring the skills you have, but you also need to develop new ones. To improve, I had to find a striking coach. I went to a couple different gyms, but I just wasn't clicking with anybody.

I remembered the advice my mom had given me when I was searching for the judo coach who could take me to the next level. “There isn't a best coach; there's a best coach for you.”

By early 2010, a few of the guys I trained with over at Hayastan were also working out at Glendale Fighting Club (GFC), which was owned by Edmond Tarverdyan. Edmond was younger than most trainers, not even thirty, but he had been running his own gym and training fighters since he was sixteen. The guys from Hayastan said good things about Edmond as a striking coach, so I went over to see the place.

When I first went to the GFC, it was filled with dudes speaking in Armenian who turned and stared at me when I walked in, as if I had landed from an alien planet. I couldn't understand what they were saying, but I was pretty sure I knew what they were thinking:
Who the hell is this girl, and what is she doing in our gym?
They knew that Edmond “didn't train girls,” that he was “never going to train a girl.”

Manny introduced me anyway. Or I assume that's what he did because the actual conversation between him and Edmond was “[Something in Armenian], Ronda. [More Armenian.]”

Edmond did not even look in my direction.

There were ten to fifteen guys in the club at any given time: hitting the bag, doing drills, riding the bike, hitting mitts in the ring with Edmond, and sparring. Then there was me, this blonde chick with absolutely no idea what she was doing when it came to striking. Manny started working out, and I was alone, standing there listening to the whir of the exercise bike, the smacking of mitts being hit, and Armenian music playing over the speakers. No one spoke to me—not in Armenian, not in English.

I put on my gloves and started hitting the heavy bag. I knew my technique sucked, and no one took the time to correct me. I felt stupid; I looked stupid; but I got down to work. As I worked out, I watched Edmond give Manny instructions inside the ring. Even though Edmond was giving instruction across the gym in a foreign language, I understood him better than I had ever understood a coach. I watched the corrections he gave Manny and I started making the same corrections myself.

I came back the next day. And the next. And the next. GFC became the part of my day that everything else revolved around.

I got to the gym between eight-thirty and nine, which is like Armenian early. The doors were locked. I didn't have a key.

I called Manny, who told me to call Roman, who told me to call Edmond and gave me Edmond's number. “Hey, is someone going to come open the gym?” I asked when Edmond answered.

“Yes, someone is going to come,” Edmond said, exasperated. “Sevak will be there soon.”

I sat on my bag outside the backdoor to the gym and waited. Sevak's sedan pulled into the GFC lot. I stood up and bounced from foot to foot.

“Morning,” I said cheerfully as he unlocked the doors.

Sevak held the door for me. At twenty-one, he was a couple of years younger than me, but had been training under Edmond since he was fourteen and had been teaching at GFC for a couple years. He largely followed Edmond's lead when it came to dealing with me, but he at least acknowledged my existence.

Sevak turned on the lights, then sat behind the desk. The gym was spotless, a result of Edmond's OCD-level obsession with cleanliness. I walked through the door, the boxing ring on my right, a large mural of Muhammad Ali and Edmond in boxing stances painted behind it with the words “Nothing Is Impossible” in big red letters.

I wrapped my hands, shaking my head at the amateur job I did on my wraps. I did the best I could, then went to work, hitting the bag. Slowly, the place came to life as fighters trickled in.

Edmond showed up between ten and eleven in the morning. He said something to Sevak in Armenian and shouted for whoever was up first to train, hopped into the ring, and got to work.

His first training session of the day done, Edmond slipped out of the ring and walked to get something out of his bag. I went up to him.

“Edmond, will you hold mitts for me?” I asked for the umpteenth time.

“No, I'm busy,” Edmond said, not even looking up.

“Maybe you could give me a drill,” I said. “I really liked the footwork one you gave me a couple of days ago.”

“Just go hit the bag,” Edmond said, giving me a dismissive wave.

I walked over to the heavy punching bag and started hitting it. I felt like an idiot. I heard two guys across the room laughing and felt the back of my neck turn red. I knew my form was a joke. I hit the bag harder and kept hitting the bag. I wanted Edmond to see that I was doing what he told me to do. I watched Edmond for tips as I worked out, but it was hard to do both at once.

When Edmond stepped back into the ring to train the next guy, a boxer I recognized named Art Hovhannisyan, I took a break from my workout and bounced back and forth on one of the tires that looked into the ring.

Edmond and the fighter were moving around the ring.
Bam. Bam. Bam.
The sound of Art hitting the mitts echoed throughout the gym.
Bam. Bam.
Edmond slipped to his left. I watched Art as he came in with another series of blows.
Bam. Bam. Bam.
Edmond bobbed and weaved. Art started to come in again, when Edmond stopped him. Edmond started talking in rapid-fire Armenian as Art listened, nodding that he understood. Then Edmond punched at the air a few times, still rattling off feedback. Art replied in Armenian and Edmond shook his head as if to say, “No, that's wrong.” He did the move again, after which Art said something else in Armenian and Edmond nodded emphatically. Then the two of them squared off again in the ring.
BAM. BAM. BAM.
The sound of the punches hitting the mitts was noticeably louder. Art did it again.
BAM. BAM.

“Shot lava!” Edmond shouted, which I imagined to mean, “Yes, yes, that's it!”

I took a few weak swings into the air, committing the combination I had just seen to memory to try out on the bag later.

I was learning to read body language really well. Edmond might refuse to give me private lessons, but I was learning more simply from observing him with other fighters than I had learned from all the other English-speaking striking coaches I had worked with. I turned my focus back to the training session in the ring. I fixed my stare on Edmond, narrowing my eyes as if I just concentrated hard enough I could will him into working with me.

This went on for a good three months. Every day, I kept coming, and Edmond let me come in for free. Being broke made me even more driven. I was determined to work harder than anyone else. I started going to Alberto Crane's gym in the Valley to train in the morning and do MMA sparring before heading to Glendale. I would leave that practice a little early so I could get to GFC.

Even then I was still the first person at the gym in the morning, which meant daily calls to Edmond asking if someone was coming to open the gym.

This happened so many times that Edmond got annoyed with me and gave me a key. He wouldn't train me, but I had a key! This was when I realized that annoying Edmond was the best way to get what I wanted. I decided I would just annoy him until he gave in.

I would watch Edmond train everybody else and continue to ask him to hold mitts for me. I kept asking every day, and every day, he would say no.

On the morning of July 16, 2010, I opened up the gym at GFC. I'd been going to Edmond's club for four months and Edmond still pretty much pretended I wasn't there. Fighters started showing up to work out, and the gym came to life. I was sitting behind the front desk wrapping my hands when Edmond walked in with Art, who unbeknownst to me was weighing in for his next fight later that day. Art jumped on the elliptical machine and started working out without saying a word.

“Edmond, can you hold mitts for me today?” I asked.

Edmond didn't even look at me. He just said, “No. I don't want to sweat in this shirt,” and kept walking.

My mouth dropped open. Rage shot through me and I thought,
What? You don't want to sweat for me in your shirt? Like the way I sweat for you every day trying to impress you? Like how I was sweating at the gym I was training at before I came over here to beg for some of your time? By the way, we're at a gym. Oh, and you can change your goddamn shirt.
I didn't say all that, but suddenly, all of my crazy came out. “THIS IS FUCKING BULLSHIT!” I yelled in the middle of the gym. The whole place went silent.

Edmond spun around in total disbelief. His tone was cold. “Don't you ever swear at me in my gym.”

Fuming, I grabbed my bags and left. I was fighting back tears.

I was never going to win Edmond's respect with hard work. I gave up. I was exhausted from training at a place where I wasn't accepted. I was going to have to figure out how to train on my own.

I drove off. But less than a mile away I realized I had forgotten my gloves at the gym. I couldn't afford another pair.
Fuck!

My phone rang. It was Edmond. I hesitated before answering, then flipped my phone open.

“Hello?”

“Ronda, it's Edmond. Drive back here and take me to the bank. We'll talk.”

I made an illegal U-turn and headed back to the gym. I wasn't sure what to expect, but, at the very least, it meant I could grab my gloves.

What I had not realized was how Edmond would react to the state of my car. Do you know those air freshener commercials where they fill a car with trash, put it in the sun, and then bring people in blindfolded to show how well their product works? My car was kind of like that without the fresh scent. Imagine an overflowing laundry basket of dirty gym clothes. Then mix that with a dog kennel. Now imagine if that same car had little cheap plastic toys glued all over the inside—in part to give it a little character and in part to distract from the zombie wasteland of my backseat. I had not washed my car in over a year. I only had one working window and no air-conditioning. It was summer in the Valley, and the temperature in Glendale that day was almost one hundred degrees.

I pulled into the gym parking lot feeling apprehensive. Edmond walked out, but when he caught a glimpse of my car, a look of disgust crossed his face and he hesitated before reaching for the handle. Somehow he managed to slip into the car without touching any of its surfaces—it was as if he was just hovering over the seat.

“Go straight, then take a left,” Edmond said reluctantly.

I nodded. I had said everything I had to say back at the gym.

“When you came to me, my mind was on Art,” Edmond explained in his thick Armenian accent. “I just said I don't want to sweat because I wanted to help him make the weight. I was not thinking about my words.”

Edmond explained that Art had been sick and drinking water and was way heavier than he was supposed to be. Art had come to the gym to try to sweat the extra pounds off in an effort to make weight. If anyone was going to be sweating, Edmond wanted it to be Art. Edmond added that it wasn't about his shirt, but that was the shirt he was wearing to the weigh-in, and he didn't have a change of clothes.