Issue 104

August 2013

Breaking Bad habits to mold championship-caliber fighters is all in a day’s work for mad scientists Greg Jackson and Mike Winkeljohn. But how did the most successful coaching double-act in MMA find the ingredients for success? FO visited Albuquerque to find out…

Rather like fictional protagonists Walter White and Jesse Pinkman in Emmy Award-winning AMC TV series Breaking Bad, Greg Jackson and Mike Winkeljohn mix ingredients in a laboratory in Albuquerque, New Mexico, with incredible, life-changing results.

Yet unlike the TV pairing, this is not the methamphetamine of the fantasy television series, but two men mixing ingredients in a combat arena, concocting an elite, lethal fighter cocktail to produce world champions and worldwide superstars. 

Jackson and Winkeljohn are, moreover, like mercury and iron. Some of the differences between them are natural, others manufactured, yet the two coaches and mentors have forged a staggeringly successful alliance arguably unrivaled by any other gym on the planet. 

While the smash-hit Breaking Bad series has given their city worldwide renown, this pair are real-life fight scientists, ‘making bad’ by breaking in new fighters, and tinkering with good ones to make them great. And in the process giving their dusty, desert town of Albuquerque real global recognition as the hottest training location in mixed martial arts. 

In an exclusive interview, Fighters Only discovers the link-up between the two MMA coaches is built on natural respect, pride and a burning desire to simply keep getting better. Organically, they have grown together after first meeting almost 20 years ago. It’s comparable to the fighters they’ve nurtured, a list of whom will one day read like a who’s who of MMA’s brightest stars. 

Jon Jones, Georges St Pierre, Rashad Evans, Carlos Condit, Diego Sanchez… the list is around 30 names strong and littered with former and present champions at every level, whose plus-80% success rate arguably speaks louder than any words ever could.

Jackson, 39, is the more mercurial of the two. It goes back to his upbringing. “If I were to have been raised somewhere else, somewhere outside where I grew up – in a largely Hispanic community – I might have been a musician, or a scientist, or whatever my limited brain allowed me to do. I don’t know if I necessarily would have done fighting.

“I think I got into the martial arts because I had to, and then I got talked into being a coach by my students who wanted to compete. I never really wanted to compete; my fighting was for self-defense only. So I was kinda the accidental tourist. I was kinda the right person, in the right place at the right time.

“In the mid-’90s the bare-knuckle tournaments, the grappling tournaments started popping up, and after the UFC came up, so they said, ‘Hey, let’s go do tournaments.’ We ended up winning everything. And then they wanted to do more because they won everything and they kept winning... here I am 20 years later.” 

Around that same period, 50-year-old Winkeljohn – less gregarious, more studied, who crops his answers suddenly as if he has just thrown a kick he wants you to block – was fighting around the world, winning three world kickboxing titles, and opening up his schools. 

They met through mutual friend Chris Lutrell, the renowned wrestler who now works with them as a coach. “Mike taught me a lot about kickboxing stuff that really helped me out a lot. When he decided to close down his school – probably six or seven years ago – that took us to the next level and we really focused on the fighters and we definitely took the next step up,” explains Jackson.

“Chris Lutrell was one of my first fighters. He’s an amazing coach. Very innovative as well. He’s come up with some good techniques. One of the best things about him is he’s a great psychological coach. He’s one of those guys who’s been in a lot of fights, so he knows how to think about them and how to push your athletes, how to get them in the right frame of mind.”

Winkeljohn, meanwhile, had started wrestling with Lutrell, a police officer in Albuquerque, when the UFC first reared its head. “I wanted to get a better ground game and so I was working with Chris,” reveals Winkeljohn. “Then he introduced me to Greg, and here we are today.”

The blend between the men is reflected in their fighters: creative, savvy, and driven to success. It’s all about winning as far as this team is concerned.

Winkeljohn explains: “We’re like good cop, bad cop. He’s looking to find a philosophical angle to get the fighters happy with where they are at, and I’m the guy who comes down on them if they don’t train hard.

“Travis Browne says I’m the ‘asshole of the gym.’ Hopefully, he means it in a caring way. I’ll come into a room, or a session, and say, ‘If you do that you’ll get your ass kicked,’ or, ‘That’ll stop you from losing.’ I’m pretty blunt. Not a lot of fluff in describing what people should do.”

Some have suggested Jackson is like a general, concocting battle strategies, while his partner is like the colonel with his top off, hat on, laying down the law in the ‘I love the smell of napalm in the morning’ manner to the troops. 

“I don’t see the military comparisons, really,” shrugs Winkeljohn. “I just get to play the bad cop. Look, it plays out like that in the cage between rounds. Greg gets them calm, and I hammer them with the basic stuff that’s going on. It’s a funny dynamic, but it works.”

He adds: “We tell people to do things, they get success. The key to fighting is putting it into practice. A lot of people know what to do. A lot of people have the tools, but the mental side of it; if they don’t believe in themselves they can’t produce in the cage. That’s what sets GSP, Jon Jones, and Anderson Silva apart.”

Jackson had “grown up surrounded by books” and “was a voracious reader” so his propensity for learning drew him into many spheres. The ability to read, learn, mark and inwardly digest has propelled him forwards as a planner and strategist. 

He also had “a bad temper” as a kid, which sometimes got him into scrapes, but he says was really borne out of just wanting people’s respect as a white kid in an Hispanic community. You wouldn’t see a hot head anywhere in the make-up of the uber-cool, ultra-calm Jackson of today. 

Neither of the two highly regarded coaches realized just how big the sport was going to be, until one night several years ago. “I honestly thought it was gonna be like kickboxing in the 1980s and early ‘90s. Everybody was like, ‘Ooh kickboxing’s the sport of the future, you know. It’s gonna take off.’ And it never really did,” says Jackson.

“I thought MMA would go the same way. I thought I was gonna do what I loved: I teach martial arts in Albuquerque, New Mexico, innovating and coming up with new techniques and new ideas and new strategies, and I was OK with it just being a small thing. I thought I would make a living of some kind, but not that it would take off like it has.”

Perhaps for that reason, Jackson was never business minded. Winkeljohn was, for several reasons. “I never scratched a living,” he says. “I was not in the MMA industry. I had my schools, but was also a commercial building contractor. I met Greg, who was talented and smart beyond his years. 

“My plan was to make him more savvy in business terms. I’d done pretty well as a commercial building contractor, I had some good years at it. After I closed up my martial arts schools, I started building for myself, but I must have built 10 strip malls over a period of one every six months.”

Then one night everything changed. “When Diego Sanchez won The Ultimate Fighter everything changed,” recalls Jackson. “He was one of my guys, and around that time, I could feel it getting really popular. After that show, everything kind of exploded.” 

Winklejohn adds: “The Diego Sanchez moment was when it all changed. Forrest Griffin and Stephan Bonnar were going at it. The amount of people who talked about it, picked up on it, after that, I figured it would go mainstream.”

They talk more of their intriguing, interlocked style of teaching, coaching, and formulating strategies – all in the pursuit of victory. “For me, we have to keep pushing towards being more professional,” admits Wink’. “Got to be more pro, more mainstream and we have to respect the mental side of it.

“It’s all about winning. I don’t care what anyone says. If you lose a fight but get ‘Fight of the Night,’ you’re still falling backward – even if the fans might be happy. It’s about who perseveres, who wins, who has the best people around them.”

Jackson pauses. “There is a lot of philosophy, for me. It depends on the fighter, but, for example, Jon Jones is definitely a cerebral guy, and he likes to study a lot of what the ancients said about combat and fighting. So I try to steer him in the direction that helped guide me. I’ve written an MMA curriculum already.”

The gym has simple, not overbearing rules. “We don’t want them being bad people, we want good guys – we won’t put up with criminal acts – they all have a wild side,” says Winkeljohn. “If they don’t last in life, they won’t last in the gym.”

For Jackson, respect features heavily. “The respect issue’s pretty big; you’ve gotta respect each other. You don’t want any fighting in the gym or anything like that. There’s not an expressed (rule) where you cannot do this – we have a culture and the culture is, you know, you try and push people in the direction that the culture is. So, helping each other out, being available, not taking advantage of each other, not stealing from each other, these are the things we try to advertise as our form of culture, our warrior culture. Being respectful, these are the things that are important to us.” 

However, the laid-back policy also opens the gym up to criticism. And Greg himself even admits his inability to say ‘no’ to friends can work against him. “It’s both a weakness and a strength. I wouldn’t be talking with you right now and having a pretty damn good life if I’d said ‘no’ to my students back then about competing. So it’s a strength and a weakness. It makes my life more difficult, but it also makes it a lot more rewarding. So it’s both, it’s a double-edged sword or two sides to a coin.” 

Just like Winkeljohn staying in the background. “It was not my personality to be out there and pretend that I’m pulling the strings,” he says about the fact he remained in his partner’s shadow for well over a decade, initially. “I like the simpler life. It’s a big part of who I am – I’m really not comfortable about limelight. I’ve been there before, been a fighter. It’s about them, not me. I want to be tuned to their dream. Now they’re living the dream.”

A part of him does ache for his prime, however. “Of course. I don’t know if I’d have been good at MMA, but I’d have had a go at it,” he says. “As I’ve gotten older, I’m so much better at all of it. I have the physical tools but not the reactions at 50. You certainly don’t heal as fast.”

Neither of them actually watches Breaking Bad, the theme of our exclusive FO photo shoot, but they are both aware the AMC show has put Albuquerque on the world map. Along with their gym of course. “Everybody seems to love Walter White, but he’s the only one I know of. The whole cast could walk in and I’m so busy I probably wouldn’t realize,” acknowledges Jackson, who admits he’s aware of the enormity of the series and the fact it’s filmed in locations across his home city. 

“Oh yeah, it’s huge here, its absolutely huge here. The problem is I don’t actually watch much TV. Not to be snobby or anything, but I can’t sit down without fidgeting. I don’t even ever watch MMA. I do MMA for 12 hours a day usually, so the last thing I wanna do when I go home is watch more of it.” 

So – the burning question is who’s actually in charge? “He’ll tell me I am, I’ll tell him he is,” laughs Winkeljohn. “You know what, Greg Jackson gives me a tremendous amount of help. He is beyond his years in knowledge of the game. He’s like my little brother.

“People will go to him for an overall game plan, then look to me for tactics, how to implement it – definitely the stand-up. I’m the guy who spends time on tactics, one on one. I get them better at how to beat an opponent. There are lots of private sessions, mitt work. I do the level changes and footwork of the opponent. So in the fight they have an unconscious confidence.

“Greg has ground classes. I have stand-up. Privately we both work with the top guys, but I’ll also put time into guys who are making our guys get better. If we have a good wrestler who is committed, I’ll pull him aside and work on him to make him a better stand-up fighter.”

It’s that cooking process again – creating the chemical, physical and mental combination to form winners. “We have so many good fighters – and the climate Greg and I wanted all along was that the guys would beat the crap out of each other in the day, but at night they are friends. It’s a crazy, fun dynamic.”

Jackson’s take marries perfectly. “We try not to have anybody be the boss, we work in collaboration,” he explains. “He’s my big brother so he looks out for me a lot. He’s taught me more about martial arts than any other individual person. I call him my big bro ‘cause he looks out for me all the time. He’s always making sure, you know, has this person paid us, have we done this, have we done that. He really is the rock I hold my back to. He’s just an amazing man and he has such a good heart.

“He’s a great strategist, and he’s brilliant at what he does. So I’m just lucky to collaborate with him. You couldn’t respect somebody more than I respect him.” 

From the four Fighters Only World MMA Awards’ statues – three for Jackson as ‘Coach of the Year’ from 2009-11, and one for ‘Gym of the Year’ in 2009 – and the handful of UFC title belt pictures adorning the coaches’ office at Jackson-Winkeljohn’s, it’s clear how the drive of these two men has literally changed the face of modern mixed martial arts. But what about the future, what does it hold for New Mexico’s finest title-winning fight cooks? 

“I’m gonna go ‘til the wheels fall off,” Jackson offers. “I’m not sure about my big bro. I still love it. I can’t imagine not doing it so it’s gonna be a while for me. You’ll have to ask Winkeljohn what his plans are, but for me I still feel like we’re innovating, I still feel like we’re pushing forward. I’m still learning. I see moves or I think of moves and I’m like, ‘Holy cow! I never thought of that!’ or, ‘Wow, let’s try this.’

“I still feel like it’s challenging, I’m still being creative. I still feel really happy when I help people become better fighters and watch them improve as humans and as warriors, so I still love it. For me there’s not much difference except there’s a lot more responsibility, a lot more pressure.”

“If I mess up now, it’s a lot of money, or somebody’s dreams, a lot more on the line than it used to be. It’s a different kind of pressure.” Winkeljohn says.

As a double-act, what they wish to achieve in MMA, and in life, differs. Winkeljohn first. “Getting people to use their footwork to defend takedowns and knock people out. To understand their space, where they need to be to hurt someone and not be hurt themselves. That’s what I’d like to be remembered for.”

Jackson, cerebral as ever, differs. “In MMA, I’d like to help as many people as I can in my life. I hope to be remembered as a good coach but I hope I uncover the strategic underlying principles that people can use to protect themselves to help them play tennis, or whatever they use for strategy.”

And, finally, in true Breaking Bad style, Jackson finishes: “Mixed martial arts is like a laboratory with a lot of big ideas. I’m cooking up strategies for fighters, and together we’re cooking it all up in the best sport on the planet.”

Jackson and Shackleton

You’ve traveled all over the world cornering fighters. Is there a continent you haven’t been to yet?

“Antarctica. I haven’t been there yet. Everywhere else I have been. I want to. I want to go trace (Sir Ernest) Shackleton’s route down there, go see at least Elephant Island where he stayed. I’m a huge Shackleton fan ­– huge. That’s one of my goals to see the route of one of the greatest leaders of all time.”

Is that one of your interests outside of fighting?

“Yeah, I have a huge picture of him on my wall. He’s a great guy. I study him, he’s amazing. It’s inspiration, because when you’re traveling and when you’re doing my job your biggest enemy is burnout. 

“You start getting apathetic, you start just not caring, you need to constantly be inspired. So I try to look throughout history for all these great leaders who are of course much tougher than I am and have actual real problems. 

“My problem is I have to sit in a cushy airline seat like, ‘Oh God, it’s awful, it’s terrible.’ You actually read about real men that actually have to do real stuff and just how smart they are, how tough they are, and what they say about life and leadership. It just gets you fired up again. When I’m fired up I feel I can keep my guys fired up.”