Ronda Rousey has a familiar face in her corner ahead of her fight against Gina Carano, but it wasn’t a coach she ever imagined training her. In fact, Rousey despised her new coach when he was working against her while filming The Ultimate Fighter.
Ricky Lundell, who is well known in the MMA community as a top wrestling and grappling coach, has worked with numerous top fighters over the years, including Miesha Tate when she was making her rise up the UFC ranks. That’s why Tate invited Lundell to serve as one of her coaches on the long running reality show when she was matched up against Rousey to reignite one of the nastiest rivalries in the history of the sport.
During filming, Rousey flat out loathed Lundell, because despite her disdain towards Tate, the veteran coach was actually being very kind to her, and she just couldn’t believe he was being genuine.
“We were mortal enemies,” Rousey said about Lundell on her YouTube channel. “Started off as mortal enemies. He was coaching against me on The Ultimate Fighter and he was so nice, I was like this motherf*cker is so patronizing and fake and I hated his guts. It was like the monkey in the closet from Family Guy. That was me to Ricky all the time.
“This is a common theme, by the way, that he’s so nice that everyone was like ‘this motherf*cker is not for real.’ He’s really just being a passive-aggressive assh*le, but he’s actually the nicest motherf*cker. Actually the nicest person you will ever meet. So nice that you don’t think it’s real.”
Even after the show was finished, and she beat Tate for a second time, Rousey still held a grudge against Lundell, but she once again found herself in his orbit because he also coached her future husband Travis Browne.
At the time, Browne was traveling to Glendale, Calif. to work at the same gym as Rousey and Lundell was right there alongside him.
“I was still like f*ck that guy,” Rousey said. “He tried to hurt me. He tried to help somebody hurt me, and you’re dead to me. But then he was [Travis Browne’s] coach. Trav’s like ‘no, you’ve got to give him a chance, he’s a really nice guy,’ but I was like dead to me.”
The intense bad blood, which was admittedly only from Rousey’s side, eventually started to dissipate after she was dealing with some mental health issues, and she ended up staying at Lundell’s house while Browne was training with him.
Rousey never revealed the exact timeline when this happened, but it was likely around one of her final two UFC fights when she suffered a brutal knockout to Holly Holm that cost her the bantamweight title. She returned a year later and fell to Amanda Nunes in similar fashion before she walked away from the sport.
“I fall into a deep depression and Trav goes and stays at Ricky’s house,” Rousey explained. “We’re at your house and I’m basically just in the one room, the same room I stay in now, just smoking weed and playing World of Warcraft all day and I would only emerge to eat cereal. But you were really nice and kept me supplied. There was cereal and milk at all times. I really like Ricky, he’s really nice and he kept me supplied with cereal and a place to play World of Warcraft and cry and smoke weed during my depression.”
As time passed, Rousey became friendly with Lundell and that’s when he expressed interest in getting his black belt in judo, and he couldn’t imagine a better trainer than the former Olympic bronze medalist. While Rousey had moved on from her fighting career, she still had plenty of knowledge to pass along so she agreed to train Lundell.
Rousey believes that was the seed planted that eventually led to her decision to fight again when she got the idea to face Gina Carano in a matchup between two legends from women’s MMA.
“The thought came in my mind. Oh f*ck, I should fight Gina,” Rousey said. “Dammit, that’s such a great idea. Dammit, that would be such a great f*cking fight. Dammit, it would be huge. Damn, she would totally be into that sh*t.”
Lundell says that’s when he got a message from Rousey asking to speak over the phone, and he knew right away that she was going to plot her comeback to MMA.
“Right then, I knew exactly what was going down,” Lundell said. “But it was ‘do you have a minute to talk?’ I call her and she’s like ‘hey’ and [I said] who are we fighting? She starts laughing, and she’s like you know me too well. How did you know that?’”
Rousey eventually connected with Carano, and they started working towards booking a fight, which was later picked up by Jake Paul’s Most Valuable Promotions with Netflix serving as the broadcast partner for the event.
Now Rousey is fighting for the first time in a decade when she faces Carano on May 16 and she admits it’s possible none of that happens without Lundell pulling her back into training when she was teaching him judo.
“This is all because of Ricky,” Rousey said. “I went from hating his guts to him changing my life for the better and I’ll be eternally grateful. It’s been the greatest experience ever. He is my first ever black belt in judo. He started out as my student and now I’m his student.”
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