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Will UFC’s future matchmaking decentralize MMA’s team-dominated training structure?

By Zach Arnold | March 24, 2011

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It took me a while to come up with the right wording for this question, but it’s the question that seems to be everyone’s mind now that the battle between Jon Jones & Rashad Evans has intensified. (Just ask our friends at Pro MMA Radio who have interview segments with Rashad every month.) On Sherdog this past Monday, Greg Savage & Jordan Breen discussed their meeting with Greg Jackson after UFC 128 where Jackson was not comfortable with the way things played out between Jones & Evans.

“I do sense it’s going to be one of those things where it’s an echo chamber effect because you’ve seen incrementally now Rashad Evans, with every day, I think it’s like when he says these things it goes back in through his ears and sort of like re-embeds itself in his head because he seems to get more and more vitriolic every single day. So, by the time this fight comes around, I’m not sure what to expect,” stated Jordan. “It is unfortunate, though, to think of Greg Jackson’s position because on Saturday night when we turned the camera off on that hotel room, I mean he was like visibly and obviously emotional, like the analogy he made was like, ‘Fans think it’s great that these teammates are going to fight each other, but for me it’s like if I asked you, hey, wouldn’t it be great if your Mom fought your Dad? Wouldn’t it be awesome to see your Dad knock out your Mom’s teeth, wouldn’t that be great?’ And the way in which he said was so intense, like it was clearly something that impacts into the very essential elements of his being.”

A great example of this is an interview Rashad did for Bloody Elbow where he unloaded on both Jon Jones & Greg Jackson. I’m praying that we don’t get the stupid race-baiting that we got in last year’s encounter with Rampage Jackson.

Breen’s comments about Greg Jackson reminds me of the remarks the trainer made to Ariel Helwani when he talked about not having a desire to see one of his brothers fight another brother. Now the big question on everyone’s mind is whether or not the camp that Greg Jackson has spent so much blood, sweat, and tears building is splintering thanks to the financial and political power of the UFC. Greg Savage thinks a team disintegration is a legitimate possibility.

“The end-game here is, does the camp even stay together, you know, in all of its different parts? You’ve got John Danaher basically running things for Georges St. Pierre now. Greg still does a lot of stuff with them and they’re all together, don’t get me wrong, but you have these guys who kind of set up their little domains in different parts of the camp and it’s not really as centralized as I think they had all hoped it would be at the beginning.

“I really wonder if they’re going to be able to keep those loose ties even together at least in some of those spots. I love Trevor Wittman as well but he’s been pretty outspoken on this and I’m curious to see the reaction to that from the rest of the camp. … There’s fracturing going on. Whether it fractures completely, we’ll have to just wait and see.”

Will team-oriented training camps like American Kickboxing Academy become a thing of the past? After all, the team-oriented structure for training has been one of MMA’s hallmarks.

“At this point in time, it almost is like when you see those like FBI and sort of police charts drawn out of different mob organizations like the Venn Diagrams of where the crossovers are,” says Mr. Breen. “Like the Italian Gomorrah and stuff like there where it’s not strongly centralized. It’s definitely like a bunch of different factions who happen to have some crossover here and there more so than one giant unified body.”

This is the kind of scenario that is playing out right now with Rashad Evans, who reportedly will be training in Florida for the Jon Jones fight by working with Marcus Aurelio. If teams do break apart and everything becomes decentralized, will fighters have enough money to be able to bring in the best trainers for their own camps? Jordan Breen says it’s coming soon.

“Is this sort of a step further in the direction of the Brock Lesnars of the world in just when I get to a point where I can make some serious money, I just put together my own camp? I mean, do we move further in the boxing direction where guys just focus on putting stuff together for their benefit?

“I don’t want to say this sort of absolutely but I do wonder if a camp like, say, Mark Munoz’s Reign isn’t the best thing for MMA, where it’s kind of more like an open door policy. If you know Mark or know a guy who knows Mark, you come to Reign, there’s high-level pros there. You have your trainers but you’re getting high-level quality instruction there. I mean, you can still have friends and form bonds there and whatnot, but it’s not the sense of ‘this guy’s my teammate, I don’t necessarily want to fight him.’ Some of the guys, maybe, but a lot of the guys just roll through there training once or twice a week and it’s a great hub for lots of high-quality training but guys don’t necessarily feel like they’re embedded in a team where ‘oh, I would never fight that guy that I train with once or twice a week.’ … Fighters seem to love it. It’s almost incalculable the amount of guys who say they love training at Reign and love the atmosphere there.”

With Zuffa as the only game in town, Mr. Savage says the winds are a changing.

“If they’re going to have to be fighting each other, yeah, I mean, it may very well go that route.

“I think that’s probably the direction the sport’s going to have to go. It’s being forced there. You can’t just set up these things where, you know, ‘oh, we got brothers, we’re brothers, we’re brothers’ when at the end of the day, that’s where the big-money fights are going to be. Dana White has pushed this thing forever, guys need to fight each other for competition’s sake, that’s why they need to fight, that’s what’s going to happen. At the end of the day, money is what talks. … You ever heard the old AKA thing, ‘maybe for a title, maybe for a million dollars‘, and it’s been a continuing narrative between many of the different camps or different groups of fighters that this question has been posed to. They generally always come up with a reason why they could do it but more than likely wouldn’t. Well, now, you have the money factor in that the UFC’s able to pay and the fact that there’s not a lot whole of other places to go, Dana White may have finally found his niche in this argument and he’s got a lever there, he’s got a wedge and he’s using it and I think you’ve seen that for the first time in Jon Jones & Rashad Evans.”

Surprisingly, Breen thinks this a good development.

“And it’s great, too, because if there is one stipulation that Dana White is going to be pretty flexible on, I mean we know the kind of autocracy he likes to run. But if you’re going to ask Dana White for any kind of condition in fighting a teammate, isn’t the one you’re going to have the most success for money? Like if you just say, ‘Yeah, I’ll fight my teammate, give me a million dollars.’ There’s an overwhelming chance that you’re going to get a discretionary bonus within 10 seconds. And how easy is that? And ultimately, I think we say that and I often get e-mails sort of like, ‘isn’t there something more to the world than money?’ And, yeah, maybe, but Rashad Evans’ (has) a wife, he’s going to have a family some day. It’d be nice to know that, even if he went out and got absolutely mauled by Jon Jones, that one day when Rashad Evans has kids and there’s Rashad Jr. and Lance III and so on, they can go ‘Dad, we have a really nice house, where did it come from?’ It wasn’t Jon Jones and Greg Jackson, although they did team up to beat me up, but hey, we got this house for it. It’s terrible, but that’s how the world works. I mean, it’s prize fighting.”

A sober answer?

Mike Winkeljohn has already chose to work with Jon Jones and he knows where his bread is buttered.

Topics: Media, MMA, UFC, Zach Arnold | 20 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |

20 Responses to “Will UFC’s future matchmaking decentralize MMA’s team-dominated training structure?”

  1. 45 Huddle says:

    1) Grappling requires a team oriented atmosphere in order to train properly. That will never change. You just can’t get better without constantly rolling with high level guys.

    2) The more I see the Team Jackson drama unfold, the more I think it’s just a bad team structure, and not an indication of how this will unfold in the future. From the words of both Sanchez and Evans…. Jackson wanted to bring in another fighter that was a contender or future contender and acted like it was no big deal. And he pissed off his established fighters. This is very different then like AKA, where Fitch & Koscheck are true training partners that work to make themselves better over time.

    3) I don’t understand why this is even an issue. 95% of the fighters talk about their TEAM helping them out during their post fight interviews. It’s the only thing that makes them better. It’s the only thing that gets them to the next level.

    The chances of 2 fighters from the same camp being in the Champion vs. #1 contender position is slim. It never even had a chance to happen with AKA at Welterweight. It might happen at Featherweight soon, but that weight class is shallow and as it expands it will be harder to come by. And with Team Jackson, it only happened because Jackson picked up a guy who everybody could see was a future star…. When he already had a champion/contender in that same weight class. So this was drama created by the team itself that could have been avoided.

    I don’t think it will rip apart the team aspect of the sport.

  2. nottheface says:

    It looks to me to be matter of policy for Zuffa to want to see team mates fight for the simple fact it does breaks up and weaken strong camps. Imagine if Koscheck had won the WW title. Now AKA would have the HW and WW title. Or imagine if Gracie’s camp was in the UFC with the LW, WW, and MW belts. Without other promotions the best leverage these fighters would have if they collectively negotiated together. And camps like Gracie’s and AKA, which are strong tightly bound camps are the type that would see through with such a threat, for the benefit of their teammates. The UFC seems to be trying to make sure no camp holds them hostage in the future.

    • 45 Huddle says:

      Policy?

      How often has the UFC pushed for fights between fighters in the same camp?

      95% of the time it has to do with a title or a #1 contenders fight…. Which at that point the ability for creative matchmaking is over and it’s tough to avoid such instances.

      Which is completely in the right on the UFC’s end. They avoid fights between teammates until they don’t have a choice. And then the fighters have to make a tough choice of either hurting their own careers or fighting their teammates.

      But to have a situation like we did in PRIDE were Shogun was the best Light Heavyweight (I know it was called MW)…. And yet Wanderlei Silva was still champion because they wouldn’t fight was pointless. Nobody wants that in the UFC. They want the best to be champion. And sometime that means teammates fight when it comes to being at the top of the division.

      • 45 Huddle says:

        And let me take the Jon Fitch and Josh Koscheck situation as an example. And let’s throw in a little Mike Swick into the equation.

        At one point all were in the Top 10 at Welterweight. At no point was there any huge pressure for them to fight each other. The UFC did good matchmaking to avoid it for a while.

        Mike Swick went away as a contender, but Fitch & Koscheck were still left. Before Fitch/Alves 2 was scheduled, Fitch had really nobody left to fight for a #1 contender’s fight that wasn’t already a rematch…. EXCEPT Josh Koscheck. Well, Fitch balked at it. So the logical fight that should have been made wasn’t.

        Then Fitch wins the #1 contenders fight and after the fight he basically says: “Well, I want the title shot, but if Koscheck wins, I’m not going to say if I’m willing to fight him.”

        HOW THE F#CK CAN DANA WHITE PLAN HIS TITLE CONTENDERS WHEN JON FITCH IS PLAYING A GAME LIKE THIS???? He’s can’t. So what happens, Fitch gets passed up, and rightfully so.

        The UFC has to be able to have more notice to set up future contenders. They can’t bank on fighters playing this game of “Maybe I will, maybe I won’t”.

        I’m a big Jon Fitch fan, which is why I feel comfortable giving this example. I’m a fan of his, but I know he was in the wrong here to play this game.

        The UFC has DONE THEIR JOB in not forcing fighters to fight friends and teammates early on in their UFC careers. Now it is the FIGHTERS JOB to treat this like a sport and when they do have to fight friends or teammates for a title or a shot at the title…. They need to do it.

        That’s fair. The UFC is doing their part. It’s time for the fighters to do their part.

  3. Phil says:

    I think the camps/fighters will stay smart and keep it so that they only fight each other for the belt. I wouldn’t even do it for a title shot, because fighting for a “title shot” in the UFC is not a guarantee.

    I don’t see anything wrong with the UFC wanting it either, I want to see the best fight the best. If two people are too close to each other that they don’t want to fight, that means they don’t want to be the best, that’s fine, just step to the side, and don’t whine about being passed over or being one of the people who fights for a paycheck or to be entertaining. If you want to be the best, and your friend is one of the best, you have to fight.

  4. […] team-orientated coach is having a tough time dealing with the situation on a personal level. Via Fight Opinion: “It is unfortunate, though, to think of Greg Jackson’s position because on Saturday night when […]

  5. David M says:

    The question about Brock Lesnar style camps is unrelated to the fiscal capabilities of 99% of mma fighters.

    Most fighters who have a fight coming up don’t have the luxury of establishing their own camp in a faraway locale and bringing in exotic training partners and paying big bucks for it. Most guys just have to train at a regular gym and maybe can bring in different high-level sparring partners at times but nothing like what Brock or BJ Penn can do.

    45 why do you single out grappling as requiring high level rolling partners, as if boxing and kickboxing don’t require high level sparring partners?

    • 45 Huddle says:

      In wrestling, it takes good partners to get better. Just the nature of the sport. It’s based on feel much more then striking is. Striking takes talent too, but it’s just different.

      It is very common to see clusters in wrestling. A NCAA Champion’s best in gym training partner will be a weight class above an below him and either be a national champion himself or be very close to it. They need that to get better.

      Who do big time boxers spar with? You don’t see the big names in the same camps. They all mostly have their own camps. You don’t see high level guys like Koscheck and Fitch training every day together in boxing.

      You can get people to emulate striking styles in the gym. Old time boxing legends as coaches and stuff like that. You can’t emulate wrestling unless you have a live partner who is also in shape ready to grapple.

      • Robert Poole says:

        That’s not true 45. Look at Pacquiao. He spars with Amir Khan. Oscar De La Hoya would spar with Shane Mosley. A lot of the top guys spar with other top guys to get better.

        It makes a huge difference when your opponent has different styles than you are used to. Not used to a left handed striker? What about a guy with blazing speed or head movement? How about a guy that takes awkward angles? Sure you can get any schmo to stand there and take punches but many times you need other elite caliber fighters to replicate the speed and styles of other elite fighters. Average guys just can’t do that.

  6. Steve4192 says:

    I agree that the “I won’t fight friends/teammates” mindset is on it’s way out.

    In addition to Jones-Evans, we have another example of the demise of that line of thought this weekend. Much like Reign, the guys at Alliance also have an open door policy when it comes to training. Phil Davis has trained quite a bit with the Nogs and plans to continue training with them in the future. But they are going to set that relationship aside this weekend and do some business. That is how it should be.

    The sooner the insular camps die out, the better IMO. A more open training philosophy will lead to better fights and better fighters.

  7. David M says:

    Did you seriously just write that you can emulate a boxer with an old coach? That is epic. I’m sure David Haye is bringing in George Foreman and Lennox Lewis to get him ready for Wladimir Klitschko. Jesus.

    As to your other points, wrestling is an amateur sport, and you see similar camaraderie amongst amateur boxing teams.

    I have no idea where you get the notion that boxers don’t spar with other high level boxers; how would you ever formulate such a thesis in your head? I know I know, you can stay sharp dealing with old time legends and whatnot, but don’t you think that these guys want to, you know, be ready to actually fight against someone at full speed?

    Do you really think AKA and Jackson’s have invented something that Top Rank Gym, Wild Card Gym, Gleason’s Gym, Kronk Gym, Johnny Tocco’s, etc didn’t do before? You think there have never been multiple high level boxers at the same place before sparring together?

    Please explain why grappling requires more actual sparring than boxing does, I am really curious to hear this. Here is an interview with Johnathon Banks, ranked top 30 at HW and one of the Klitschkos’ main sparring partners, explaining how he is valuable as a sparring partner to them (apparently he does things that an old coach can’t!) http://www.aolnews.com/2010/05/26/american-johnathon-banks-contributes-to-klitschkos-dominance/

    • fd says:

      “Did you seriously just write that you can emulate a boxer with an old coach? That is epic. I’m sure David Haye is bringing in George Foreman and Lennox Lewis to get him ready for Wladimir Klitschko. Jesus.”

      http://www.boxingscene.com/lennox-lewis-spar-with-david-haye-klitschko–17523

      • edub says:

        Burn.

        • 45 Huddle says:

          A boxer can only take so many head shots. Sparring has to be done sparingly. So by it’s very nature it won’t happen as much as wrestling. You can do a lot hitting pads. You can’t do much shadow wrestling an learn. Why? Because in wrestling the bodies are interlocked. You need that live parter to really develop.

          And thanks for providing the link. It proves my point about boxing.

          In no way is this a shot at boxing. They are awesome at what they do. But it’s really an individual sport.

          Wrestling is the most team based individual sport I can think of. You need your team to get better. Even at the Olympic level this is true.

        • Chuck says:

          45;

          What about judo? Brazilian Jui Jitsu? NAGA? Sambo? They are grappling sports, and you sure as HELL need partners to roll with. I do agree with wrestling that you absolutely need a team, or at least a couple of guys who you can roll with. I wrestled, do judo, etc. I know how it is.

          I know one guy who is a buddy of mine in New York who is a brown belt, and he is good. Problem? His school is mostly kids, and he is a BIG dude (probably 6’4″ and definitely about 300 lbs.) and the only other adult is an 18 year old who is MUCH smaller, but is still a pretty good player. Oh, and the other adult is his mother. How does my buddy do at tournaments and competitions? Miserably. He doesn’t have the competition at his gym. It sucks but what can ya do? I’ve had that problem being at practices with only kids, but they are few and far between. I have quite a few adults and teens to roll with. I’m higher ranked and much more experienced than pretty much all of them (combined with my wrestling background, even moreso) but it helps. Your game can get so much better rolling with other people. Even if you are ten times better than them, maybe they are taller than most of your other sparring partners, and going against someone with height advantages (I always have this problem) does help. Or people who are shorter and stockier than you, it can help tenfold.

          To make it short, ALL fighting arts you need others to train with. As they say, it takes two to tango….

  8. Norm says:

    I may be coming from the wrong perspective, but why is it such a big deal to fight a team mate? MMA is a sport in which the goal is to find out who is the best fighter. It’s not a street fight with overly malicious intent. Sure guys get cuts, busted up, bells rang, etc. but the most serious injuries are broken bones that ultimately heal. If it’s a fight that makes sense in the grand scheme of order within a division and is financially beneficial for all parties, why not book it? These guys go at it in the gym everyday for free, might as well get paid.

    • Chuck says:

      A few things;

      One, broken bones usually don’t heal correctly. If you break a bone, 9 times out of ten there will be something wrong with the bone (looking at my deranged left ring finger I broke at wrestling practice when I was in elementary school….)

      Two, there are quite a few factors as to hwy gym mates won’t fight each other. The stupid reason? Because they are friends. Stupid, I know. The reasonable reasons? Jon Fitch put it in perspective some years ago. If you are set to fight someone at your gym, you can’t train/spar with them. You should stay away from them. So what do you do? Does one fighter train in the morning/noon and the other fighter trains afternoon/evening? Does one fighter leave that gym? See it’s not that easy. Personally I think fighters should just fight, but the reason why not does make sense. If I was a fighter? I would just fight my gym mates, especially for bigger money fights.

      And another thing……if fighters won’t fight each other because they are friends, does that mean these guys have no problem giving beatings on guys they don’t know or they aren’t friends with? Pretty silly ethics code if you ask me, but what can ya do? And these guys usually spar with each other, so what’s the difference (besides what I outlined above this) if the do it for money like you said?

      Again, like I said, the answer is not that simple.

    • Kamander says:

      Because in the gym you’re not going to intentionally injure your opponent. If Jones and Evans will still buddy/buddy, would Jones be able to do to Evans what he did to Vera?

      I would not want to be in that situation.

      I do think that if you hold the title you are obligated to take on all challengers, but otherwise you have the right to refuse the title fight.

      As for the UFC decentralizing MMA’s team-dominated training structure, the UFC orchestrated the entire thing between Jones and Evans in order to set a precedent about training partners fighting each other. In addition they drastically increased UFC 128 sales and are hyping up Evans actual title shot in a way that never would have happened had he fought Shogun. I’m sure Evans is being well compensated for doing what he did.

  9. Michaelthebox says:

    I think that this fracturing is Greg Jackson’s doing, and not anything to do with the team structure actually breaking down across MMA in any way.

    Jackson brought in GSP after Diego was already near the top of the WW division. Diego left after that.

    Then Jackson brought in Jones, a rising superstar, in a division where Rashad was already top 3.

    It should be clear to fighters at this point that Jackson puts grabbing talent ahead of loyalty to his fighters. No surprise that the team is collapsing as a result.

  10. Daniel says:

    This whole thing is 100% Rashad trying to hype his fight. Sure, he probably has already spent his last days at Jackson’s camp but Rashad is a smart guy and knows his value to the UFC. It ain’t beating world class fighters, it’s hyping and drawing interest to fights.

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