Love her or hate her, Ronda Rousey is an armbar machine. At UFC 168 she defeated Meisha Tate with her eighth armbar in eight MMA fights. This armbar streak is an amazing achievement, and a lot of people (including a lot of people who don’t actually train) have been asking me how to counter this attack.
I was thinking about doing this but it turns out that someone beat me to it.
Ronda got her start in Judo, training with various coaches and ultimately medaling in the 2008 Beijing Olympics. When Ronda was in her teens she was coached by 4 time US Olympian Jimmy Pedro, and had 2 time US Olympian Travis Stevens as a teammate.
By all accounts they helped her perfect her signature armbar submission.
I don’t know the details, but something must have happened in the interim. On the night of the Rousey-Tate fight Travis tweeted he was hoping Tate would win the title. Then, just days after her victory over Miesha Tate, these two veteran judoka shot a video which takes you through defeating and escaping Ronda’s armbar. After that they got in touch with me and asked me to release it on my Youtube channel. Draw your own conclusions…
Regardless of the backstory it’s a very cool escape so I’ll share it with you now. Here’s the actual video by Travis Stevens and Jimmy Pedro on how to defeat Ronda’s rolling armbar:
