Greg Jackson fires back at Dana White over criticism
MMA trainer Greg Jackson isn’t pleased with some of the recent comments coming from UFC president Dana White, so he…
MMA trainer Greg Jackson isn’t pleased with some of the recent comments coming from UFC president Dana White, so he decided to do something about it. With White criticizing the Jackson camp for what he describes as a boring, conservative approach to fights, Jackson is firing back with a weapon of his own: statistical analysis.
“Here’s a quick stat for you. So there’s been 22 this year? We had 12 bonuses so far this year,” Jackson said in a phone interview. “So one out of every two, one of my fighters got Submission of the Night, Knockout of the Night, or Fight of the Night.”
“We sat down and did the math after we heard that. He wants to say there’s a consistency? Okay, let’s look at statistical consistencies. Let’s look at Jon Jones, who has finished every fight with me in the first round, except for that Matt Hamill one, which would have been a first-round stoppage anyway if he hadn’t thrown that illegal elbow.”
“Let’s look at Carlos Condit, who had Fight of the Night and Knockout of the Night. Even people on the undercard who people don’t really know yet. Kyle Noke, two finishes, both in the second round. Almost everybody on our team finishes consistently. There’s no fact. Everybody’s just making stuff up.”
“He didn’t hear what I was telling Nate Marquardt. Me and Trevor were screaming. Listen to the audio. At one point in the third round, I yelled at Nate very clearly, ‘Nate, you have a minute and a half to knock this guy out; you must get a knockout.’ As clear as day, and I asked Nate if he remembered me yelling that. He said, ‘Yeah, I heard you say that.’ I was screaming at him. I thought we had lost the first two rounds.”
“It didn’t bug me until Dana said it. Fans are fans, but Dana said that and, you know, I’ve worked really hard in his organization. If you look at my stats, they’re insane. Imagine you give your life to something and then your boss comes up and says, ‘Man, you suck.’ Well, wait a minute, just this year alone, half your bonuses have gone to my guys. So what are you talking about?”
“It was a morale booster for me, anyway. It’s nice to have cold, hard facts sometimes.”