Melvin Guillard UFC 119
Melvin Guillard responds to Cesar Gracie’s comments on trainer Greg Jackson.
UFC lightweight Melvin Guillard, who headlines UFC Fight Night 23: Fight for the Troops 2” against Evan Dunham, responded to Cecar Gracie’s recent comments about his trainer Greg Jackson in an interview with TapouT Radio.
In an appearance on “The MMA Hour” with Ariel Helwani at MMAfighting.com, Gracie commented that Jackson is not one of the great coaches in the world.
“He’s more of a coordinator where he puts things in perspective,” said Gracie. “And he’s great at what he does. Training’s at this time, let’s go run the mountain or something. Let’s go train with this guy. He’s more of a motivational speaker possibly, but as a true sense of the word ‘coach,’ he’s not on the same page as great coaches of the world. He’s not.”
Gracie insinuated that Jackson seeks the spotlight and gets too much credit for fighters‘ accomplishments, something Guillard emphatically denies.
“I’ve got nothing against Greg Jackson in particular,” said Gracie. “It’s just that we’re talking about him. There’s a lot of guys like that. I’m sure he’s a great guy and everything. But the guys from [American Top Team] in Florida, it’s like, you don’t have Dan Lambert doing that. He doesn’t get in the limelight and he’s great, he does everything. He sets it all up, and he’s done an incredible job. You never see him pretending he did something he didn’t do. The great coaches are in the background.”
“Coach Greg is one of the — he’s the best coach because he is who he is, not because of him teaching me or Clay Guida or freakin GSP (Georges St. Pierre). It’s not about that to him. He doesn’t care about the spotlight. Greg has never cared about the spotlight. He cares about helping us,” insisted Guillard.
“For Cesar Gracie to say that, he doesn’t really know Greg Jackson.”
“I’ll tell you this man, when you’re at the top of the game or whatever it is, whether you’re a poker player or whatever your job may be, when you’re a the top, people are always trying to drag you down. That’s just the way life is,” said the Greg Jackson trained lightweight.
Fighters don’t typically take kindly to someone criticizing their coaches, and Guillard is no different.
“I was cool up until the guy’s just really trying to bash my coach. He don’t know coach Greg. That man will give you the shirt off his back,” Guillard told Tapout Radio.
“Ask Cesar Gracie if he charges his guys ten percent of their money. Coach Greg and them don’t charge us anything. They let us pay them what we want to pay them. What kind of coach or team do you go to that says it’s not about the money, just pay us what you can or whatever you want? And if I didn’t pay him, he’s still going to coach me. I bet I can’t go to any Gracie School and not pay them a dime. The Brazilians would kill me.”
“Maybe Cesar Gracie isn’t getting the recognition he wants,” continued Guillard. “You know what I mean? If he wants recognition that bad, why don’t he go back to Brazil because really and truthfully we’ve got enough people in the United States already. We really don’t need him here.”
In his head-to-head match up with a Cesar Gracie fighter, Guillard was submitted by Nate Diaz at UFC Fight Night 19 in 2009, but doesn’t think Cesar Gracie’s team compares to Greg Jackson’s.
“Look at our track record. Our team dominated last year. We took home more than half of the bonuses last year. Just last year somebody from our team won one of the big bonuses on damn-near every fight card,” said Guillard. “I don’t see any Cesar Gracie guys getting big bonuses, or getting in the spotlight unless it’s the Diaz brothers. That’s the only two guys he’s got. I mean look at the stable of guys we have. You can’t compare.”
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