It sounds like Travis Browne's days as a part of Edmond Tarverdyan's Glendale Fight Club aren't over after all.
After pictures started showing up of the heavyweight fighter training at Black House for his upcoming UFC Halifax fight against Derrick Lewis, speculation started to flow that he had left Tarverdyan ... perhaps a good decision considering he went from heavyweight contender to 2-3 under Edmond's tutelage. But according to Browne, the location of the training may have changed but Edmond is still his coach.
"That's all it was, that the location of my camp was different," Browne said in a recent radio interview. "It's just getting consistent work and having consistent bodies out here in Vegas, especially for the guy that I'm facing right now. It's just one of those things where as a team we felt it better to do the camp out here based on that -- the bodies are out here. So instead of flying guys in or constantly travelling to different places, it's better to go where the bodies are."
"[Edmond] is still my coach, and he comes out every week to help out. The only difference is it's not in his gym. The man has a family, he has kids. So it's one of those things where, for me to ask another man to come out for two to three months, he just can't do that. So this camp he's not as big of a part as he had been previously, but he is still part of this camp."
From there Travis went on to criticize all the websites that jumped to conclusions on the subject.
"The MMA media community, unfortunately, most of them are just that, they're tabloid, they're looking for a headline they can write," he said. "And it's sad because there has to be a market for that as well and people believe what they read in the headline without really researching it or anything like that. But can you blame them because it's the media that's supposed to be telling them the truth, but they're not."
As for all the criticisms against Tarverdyan? Travis thinks they're unfair.
"I think it's easy to judge from the outside," Browne said. "Anyone that I've ever had in camp to train with as a training partner, they're always like 'Edmond knows what he's talking about.' He has a great fight IQ, and he's got good coaching and it's about the athletes going out there and performing. Every coach has lost. Every champion with the exclusion of Jon Jones has lost. Why didn't the community come down on those coaches? Where was everyone there, then? Why are you singling him out? It isn't fair ... but life isn't fair."
At the end of the interview, a few questions were asked about Browne's girlfriend Ronda Rousey, but he avoided most of them without giving much of an answer.
"She's doing great, she's in a great place," he said before clamping down and refusing to give details regarding her future. "What she's doing is up to her to let people know. I've got a fight February 19th and that's all that matters."
For more information on Browne’s fight at UFC Fight Night: Halifax and other UFC events, click here.