An MMA Thanksgiving: 2016 All-Turkey Team

Edmond Tarverdyan

Tarverdyan has a habit of making headlines for all the wrong reasons, and he continued to breathe life into that perception over the past 12 months, most notably at UFC 203 on Sept. 10. It was there that Fabricio Werdum’s second victory over Travis Browne became a footnote because of what occurred afterward.

Before the final verdict for the co-main event was announced, Werdum had a brief altercation with Tarverdyan, Browne’s coach, which ended with the Brazilian throwing a push kick at the Glendale Fighting Club head trainer. Fortunately, the UFC avoided a full-blown melee, as both corners were ordered to exit the cage before the situation could escalate.

According to Werdum, who ultimately won a unanimous decision over Browne, he reacted the way he did simply to keep Tarverdyan at a safe range.

“The coach comes in and he says, ‘Shut up your mouth, mother [expletive]. I said, ‘What?’ For me he’s [calling my mom a whore]. I just keep the distance,” Werdum said at the post-fight press conference. “I know he’s a boxing coach. I could see in his eyes he wanted to punch my face. I just kept the distance; that’s it. He said a lot of bad things. My mom said never say bad things about nobody, but he started it.”

Earlier in the year, Tarverdyan was issued a three-month suspension by the California State Athletic Commission for falsifying his application for a cornerman’s license. Tarverdyan was also fined $5,000 and given three years’ probation. Tarverdyan initially had his license suspended in January after the CSAC learned that he was arrested in 2010 on two felony counts of identity theft and one count of resisting arrest. He ultimately pled no contest to the charges and was sentenced to one day in jail, three years probation and 30 days of community service. Tarverdyan wrote “no” on his cornerman’s application in April on the section that asked whether he had any prior criminal offenses.

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