Greg Jackson: What Davis Does Best, Evans Does Better
Sherdog.com Staff Jun 21, 2011
According to Greg Jackson, Rashad Evans (right) has the style to
combat Phil Davis. | Photo: Dave Mandel
After getting caught in the middle of teammates turned potential opponents Rashad Evans and Jon Jones, Greg Jackson has learned his lesson.
“I’ve learned from the situation definitely,” the trainer said recently on the Sherdog Radio Network. “I won’t make the mistakes that I made this time again. I’m very fallible. I do make mistakes. I’m going to do my best not to ever get caught in that position again.”
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On whether Phil Davis has what it takes to beat Rashad Evans: “I don’t think so. I think Rashad’s my man and I think that the tools that he has are kind of the strengths of somebody like Phil Davis. Phil Davis is very, very good at staying long and then taking you down and holding you there, but it’s almost impossible to hold Rashad on the ground. He’s so good at getting up. Even what Phil does best, Rashad does better at getting up. Of course Rashad has better striking. I really feel that Rashad will win, and that’s no disrespect to Phil at all. I think he’s an amazing fighter and a great guy, but Rashad will always be my guy in that area. I’ve gotta go with Rashad.”
On the challenges Quinton
Jackson poses to Jon Jones: “Quinton is always dangerous.
He’s dangerous from the first second of round one to the last
second of round three. He puts his combinations together very well.
His wrestling is good and he has that power punch. If you get even
a little bit complacent, he can put you right down with it. And
he’s such a vet. He’s been around a long time. He’s an incredibly,
incredibly dangerous fighter. We have to really kind of take all
that into account and make sure that we’re able to try to
neutralize all of his strengths because he is a very, very good
fighter.”
On whether Nate Marquardt, who’s moving to welterweight, would fight teammate Georges St. Pierre: “I don’t know that it is out of the equation. You have to talk to Nate and GSP about that. We definitely have protocols in place now if we do have to fight each other, but that’s between those guys. I feel like he wants to go down to 170 because he feels he’ll have a little more success than he’s been having recently at 185. At the end of the day you want to put on a great show and win fights, and he thinks he can do that better if he goes down to 170 pounds.”
On Shane Carwin’s performance against Junior dos Santos: “It was definitely dos Santos’ night, but I was really proud of Shane just coming out again and again and again and really showing everybody his gas tank was legit and that he had a lot of heart. I thought that was great.”
On Donald Cerrone’s performance against Vagner Rocha: “I wanted him to do what he did in the last 30 seconds in the first 30 seconds of that fight. That wasn’t the game plan to be tentative like that, although if Cowboy’s not really fired up mentally, it’s really hard to get him going in that first round especially. I didn’t want to play the ground game with this guy very much at all. He was a little too tentative on the feet in the first round for me and then he started picking it up and looked really good after that. But I didn’t want him to reign in. I wanted him to attack more if anything. … Cowboy has a relentless style, so I don’t like him kind of staying [back]. I think he should always be looking to knock the guy out, always looking to finish him. He’s one of those guys that kind of needs to throw caution to the wind smartly a little bit. He has such great endurance capability, and I really want him to utilize that.”
Listen to the full interview (beginning at 1:28:05).
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