Did the UFC Manipulate Jones vs Evans to Divide Team Jackson?
Mar 22, 2011 12:24 pm
It's official. New UFC light heavyweight champion Jon Jones will face his former teammate Rashad Evans in his first title defense.�
The two had resisted the match-up initially since they both train under coach Greg Jackson -- a camp that frowns on intra-camp bouts. This is a sore spot with UFC President Dana White.�
White has long raged against fighters who refuse to fight teammates. Most notable have been his attempts to break up the American Kickboxing Academy and force top welterweights Jon Fitch and Josh Koscheck to face off.�
This is a much bigger issue than fans realize. Fighters like Jones, Evans, Fitch and Koscheck join camps like Jackson MMA and AKA so that they can experience elite level training without paying the full cost of the camp. If multiple top fighters pool their resources to hire coaches, trainers, rent equipment and train together they can get much better training than if each individually bore the whole cost of the camp.�
Brock Lesnar can afford to pay all his coaches, trainers and sparring partners to build a camp around him. Most MMA fighters can not.�
The camaraderie and openness that fighters at camps like Jacksons or AKA experience makes a huge difference as well. If the fighters are confident that they won't someday be facing off against their training partners, then they can train without holding back, dramatically increasing their learning and the value of the camp.
For someone like Greg Jackson who has built his reputation and his business on running a very close camp with a tight esprit d' corps, this blow could be devastating. The Jones-Evans rift could turn Jackson MMA into just another camp where fighters circle each other warily and come and go with only minimal exchanges in knowledge.�
Jones initially towed the Jackson company line. Here he is just last October talking to�MMA Junkie�about Rashad Evans:
"To me, being able to call Rashad when we're 40 years old and say, 'Let's go fishing,' that's more important than a paycheck that we would get today. I train with the guy. We've had conversations about personal things."..."Rashad's a unique character to me," Jones said. "There's not many guys that I can relate to like Rashad, and preparing to do physical damage to him just doesn't add up to me.
"Fighting Rashad is the last thing I'd ever want to do."
Jones even elaborated further in an interview with�MMA Scraps Radio�(transcription via�Cage Potato), saying he'd even fake an injury to avoid fighting Evans:
Ummm...I just think there's lots of ways around it. You know, you could fake injuries. You could do anything. I mean, there's just so many ways around it, you know? But before I joined the team that was the first conversation we had. It was just about friendship. Greg Jackson's team is known for their brotherhood...our brotherhood. We treat each other with so much respect and love and genuine care. We have all of these great fighters in our camp who try their best to fight exactly like Brandon Vera for me when I'm getting ready for that fight. I've got guys giving me coaching advice after practice -guys who are UFC vets. There's just no egos. These guys have opened my eyes on how to train like a pro athlete. It would be so wrong of me to use all that I've gained from them against them. It just won't happen.
But Jones changed his tune in a live interview on�Versus�(transcription via�MMA Fighting):
"I respect [UFC president"> Dana [White"> a lot, and if that's what he absolutely wanted to happen, then I guess that's what would have to happen," he said. "Me and Rashad would not want to get fired over the situation."..."It would be majorly awkward for us," he said. "Rashad and I have a lot in common. We're both young, African-American men with families. We both like to sing and have fun. We're both elite MMA fighters. We have a lot in common and we both clicked really well. There's so many other great fighters in the world that we can compete against. And we're not animals, we're friends, we're people, we're human beings, so I'd hate to have to fight my own teammate. I would never want to.".
Rashad Evans took offense and the rest is history -- don't miss�the scathing interview Evans gave our own Duane Finley. Here's a money quote as a tease:
"When Jon Jones came to the gym over a year ago Greg Jackson came to me and said, 'listen, what do you feel about having this kid on the team?' I told him straight up that I didn't like it. I told him that the kid was talented and that the sky was the limit with him but that was the type of guy I wanted to fight not train with. Greg came back saying, 'No, no, no this will be just like you and Keith where he will be just like a brother.' I still told him that I didn't want to do that. Then Greg said if that situation ever did arise between Jones and I that he would have to turn the fight down because that's how it works. He would have to turn down the fight with me so that way I wouldn't be put in a position where I looked like a punk. That's how it works in the Greg Jackson system. After a while Greg was so high on this kid coming in and I met Jon Jones and he was a very nice and very sweet kid, so eventually I said f**k it, let' s bring him in. After he got there and I trained with him and tried him out a little bit, something didn't feel right so I moved my camp up to Denver to train at Grudge for awhile. That is where I spent the majority of my time over the past two fights.
Now Jackson is trying to deal with the fall out. He personally said after the fight that he wouldn't be involved in the Jones-Evans match in any way shape or form. But his partner Mike Winkeljohn seems to be choosing a side, per�MMA Junkie:
"I'm kind of leaning toward working with Jon, and Rashad had not opted to work with me personally in his last few fights," said Jackson partner Mike Winkeljohn. "I feel like there had been a small split between us. I love the guy to death, and if there's anybody that has the tools and uses them right and can challenge Jon Jones, it would be Rashad Evans. I just don't know if I can coach against Rashad. So I haven't figured that one out yet."
The tension is also dividing Greg Jackson's camp in Albuquerque, NM with their close training affiliate Grudge in Colorado. Team Jackson fighters like Nate Marquardt and Shane Carwin actually train mostly in Colorado under Grudge coach Trevor Wittman. For his part, he's sticking by Rashad. Unfortunately for Wittman, Rashad has flown the coop entirely and headed off to Florida to train for the Jones fight.
Fighters Only�reports that Evans is taking Jackson's long-time wrestling coach Mike Van Arsdale and heading to Imperial Athletics.
For Dana White and the UFC it's just fuel for the fire to add interest to the Jones-Evans title fight, but it's also had a nice added benefit of weakening one of the strongest camps in MMA. The more fighters are divided in an endless battle of all-against-all the more the UFC can impose its will on the fighters.
