Issue 047
March 2009
The final UFC action of 2008 ended with Rashad Evans being declared the light heavyweight champion. As Bruce Buffer’s announcement rang around the MGM Grand Garden Arena, this victory confirmed another title in the minds of many. Greg Jackson: the hottest MMA trainer on the planet.
As well as guiding Evans to the pinnacle, Jackson has been the brains behind the careers of Nate Marquardt, Keith Jardine, Diego Sanchez and Julie Kedzie. Georges St Pierre is many people’s idea of the perfect fighter. When he decided he needed to up his game, he too beat a path to Jackson’s door.
Greg Jackson never set out to be a coach. His journey in the martial arts began for more practical reasons. “I wanted to learn how to defend myself. I grew up in New Mexico, which is a predominantly Hispanic place, and I’m about as ‘white bread’ as they come, so I was very different from the other kids. Kids are always rough, but it can be amplified and, in my case, it was amplified by me being the only white kid where I grew up. There’s a machismo culture here. They don’t really respect if you’re rich or smart. It’s all about if you can fight. There are kids who don’t really care if they spend the next night in juvie or in prison, or the next night at home. It’s all the same to them. The only thing they respect is, can you kick their ass? So I figured I’d better learn how to do that.”
Jackson was from a family with a strong wrestling background and he had a basic knowledge of judo and kickboxing. With plenty of opportunities to test these techniques on the streets, he developed his own realistic fighting style with its own consumer friendly name: Gaidojitsu. “Gaidojitsu was something I made up because I wanted it to sound a little more legitimate than just American Street Fighting.”
“I opened my first school when I was 17, because I’d been fighting and some of my friends wanted to know how I was doing the stuff I was doing. A couple of years later, my students talked me into doing the mixed martial arts competitions. I never really wanted to be a coach, they talked me into it and we started winning. It went from there and here I am.”
Now called simply Jackson’s MMA, the star-studded camp sticks to the simple formula of improvement through hard work and technical excellence. Fighters are pushed to the limit, running in the thin air of the mountains outside Albuquerque. Back in the gym, ‘Circles’ are a staple of fight preparation. Short for ‘Circles of Death’, this exercise sees fighters enduring round after round of intense sparring, with a fresh opponent each time the buzzer sounds.
The unique selling point of Jackson’s MMA is the man himself. Greg Jackson is a deep thinker. In conversation, he displays the hallmark of a great teacher. In his easy drawl, Jackson breaks complex ideas down into easily digestible, bite-size chunks often spiced up with examples from popular movies. On the walls of his gym, portraits of Abraham Lincoln and George Washington hang; celebrated strategists who motivated others. The connection is obvious.
You can find nice guys and hard task masters anywhere. The reason that that fighters flock to New Mexico is simple: Greg Jackson will make you a better fighter. Developed from his trial and error experiments in street fighting, his ability to analyse a fighting style and improve it is second to none. This makes Jackson a remarkable trainer. His tactical nous makes him a great coach. Every Jackson-trained fighter goes out armed with a solid game plan.
Rashad’s rise to the title has been a study in intelligence. Even though he possesses a granite chin and KO power, he refuses to brawl. Evans chose to frustrate Michael Bisping with his superior wrestling. Against both Chuck Liddell and Forrest Griffin, he opted to fight on the outside and wait for his aggressive opponent to give him an opening. Each time his patience paid off and he stepped in to turn the lights out.
Greg Jackson’s meticulous approach and studious manner have seen him compared to the Jedi master Yoda by some over-enthusiastic fans. The man himself finds such talk laughable. Jackson doesn’t buy into the whole circus surrounding MMA, preferring to focus on more important matters.
“We put friendship before everything. Our priorities here are first being friends, then being good artists and then, after that, taking care of the money and all that stuff which takes care of itself if you’re taking care of the rest.” Greg Jackson, the reluctant superstar trainer and his friends look set to keep taking care of business for some time yet.
