Issue 066
September 2010
Like, love or loathe the methods of trainer Greg Jackson, his strategies get results for his top-level fighters.
After recent bouts, Jackson’s star protégé Georges St Pierre has been criticised as a UFC champion lacking in excitement. Another pupil, Rashad Evans, was accused of being disappointing in nullifying Quinton ‘Rampage’ Jackson, after much smack talk ‘n hype, in a less-than-thrilling style in the late spring.
Rampage pointed the finger after defeat. “I apologize for the fight not so much because I lost but because of how it went down. I always like to put on exciting fights for the fans but Rashad came out to use that ‘Greg Jackson’ plan: be boring and squeak out a victory.”
Jackson finds a way for his athletes to win, but it begs a question over his top-level championship fighters: do they entertain? Is it a safety-first strategy at all costs? On almost every level, professional sport is about entertainment, and MMA at the highest level needs exactly that.
Without the paying public tacitly agreeing that they’re enjoying ‘a spectacle’, interest could wane.
Yet herein lies the issue. Fighters want to be full-time. They don’t want to go back to their day jobs fighting crime, discussing theorems in the staff room, or indeed picking up chip packets. Hitting the gym after a day in the office is no longer an option. It’s about a career.
Ergo, within the rapidly evolving mixed martial arts industry, title belts now have a growing monetary value, with corporate sponsors waiting in the wings. The same goes for winning streaks. A negative win / loss ratio in the UFC is a troublesome rating for fighters, unless they are born entertainers.
Ally those aspects with the volatile nature of title belts changing hands, and you can see why the win-at-all-cost strategies from Jackson are being adopted by fighters queuing to join his stable.
Mentoring at Jackson’s Submission Fighting training camp in Albuquerque, New Mexico – he is reputed to charge $500 an hour for private training sessions – stretches beyond GSP and Evans, to former WEC welterweight champ Carlos Condit, former King of Pancrase Nate Marquardt and UFC light heavyweight prospect Jon Jones.
A list longer, indeed, than the loose limbs of burgeoning UFC light heavyweight Jones who really could be the template upon which we may be able to judge Jackson’s system, which grew out of wrestling and judo locks. Jackson coined his own martial art Gaidojutsu a year prior to the first UFC event.
A report on Sherdog.com on the success of diverse gyms, camps and methodologies, in 2007 returned a victory record of 81% for fighters training in Jackson’s camps. Since then, Jackson’s grip on winning ways has only grown tighter.
Last year, Jackson was voted as the leading light in coaching circles by fans, yet he has his detractors. So too, GSP – some of them are even Canadian – who say that he is no longer an entertainer as the welterweight champion. Lay and pray, they may say, but GSP remains very successful at it.
But is it borne out of a fear of losing? And does a fear of losing detract from the essence of an MMA contest, the event itself?
“You can’t be frightened of a loss in this sport,” one fighter told me recently. “You can’t fight in this sport like you’ll be executed if you lose.”
What did GSP do to Dan Hardy on the ground in 25 minutes at UFC 111?
He attempted a kimura, an armbar, Hardy refused to be submitted, and effectively it was lay and pray from the Canadian. Hardy walked out of the arena without a mark on him, having gained the respect of the spectators.
The wider point here is Jackson’s influence. Josh Koscheck, not a Jackson-trained fighter, admitted to copying GSP’s blueprint for Hardy to defeat Paul Daley in Montreal two months later. Koscheck probably owes Jackson a royalty fee for his win.
British fighters’ inability to wrestle notwithstanding, both fights were hardly fan friendly. Ditto Rashad – Rampage.
Jackson’s box office fighters look to get a lead and defend it, as Evans did against (Rampage) Jackson. In my view, referees should be much more draconian, and reset the fighters if genuinely nothing is happening.
If one fighter is a wrestler and wants to go on the floor and the other does not, under the existent system, the experienced wrestler holds sway. For example, Dan Hardy could learn mat work for the next decade to counteract Josh Koscheck, in vain. If Koscheck wants to pin him, he will.
If a fighter is on top, passing the guard, advancing for a submission, isolating an arm, fine. But if it is lay and pray, then the referee should get ‘em up, and get ‘em up again. Fighters are supposed to be rated for aggression; the guy on the bottom is not necessarily losing.
Jackson is ‘professionalizing’ the sport, and, like all great teams and managers, knows how to play the rules to the limit. Scrutinizing the rules will keep Jackson thinking. And it needs to be done.
Gareth A Davies is boxing and MMA correspondent for The London Telegraph
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