Famed, yet controversial, MMA coach Greg Jackson has a new star pupil: Former UFC heavyweight champion Frank Mir.
Mir will be employing Jackson’s services for his fight against the upsurging Daniel Cormier at UFC on FOX 7. The Las Vegas native cited Jackson’s fabled game-planning ability as one of the primary reasons for moving his training camp out Vegas for the first time in his career.
“I’ve always been impressed with Greg Jackson’s game planning,” said Mir to ESPN. I figured, before I retire, I want to be a part of that and see what makes this guy so successful.”
But that isn’t to deride his former digs at Sin City. Mir doesn’t doubt the abilities of his long-time trainers and gym; he just wants to shake things up.
“I’ve always felt I have great trainers so there was no reason to leave, but my wife and I were talking about how I needed to change things up,” he said. “One of the things was maybe I should get out of town and get more focused.”
Whether Mir’s most recent loss—a trouncing at the hands of then-UFC heavyweight champ Junior Dos Santos at UFC 146—was caused by a lack of focus rather than a lack of raw abilities is debatable. Mir couldn’t take Dos Santos down to apply his Brazilian jiu-jitsu and his striking was light years, nay parsecs, behind that of his Brazilian foe.
But when you hear that some of Mir’s workouts were in his garage, it’s tempting to lead towards the side of Mir not being ready; steel can’t be sharpened by tin.
“I ended up working out in the garage with dumbbells,” Mir said. “I still got something in, but was it the same quality as if I went to the gym? No.”
That won’t happen in Mir’s eight-week training camp for Daniel Cormier. It’s easy for a fighter to say that their rededicated to fighting but Mir, by moving his operations out to Albuquerque for this fight, has shown it.
Will Jackson be able to work his magic on Mir? We’ll have to wait until UFC on FOX 7 in April to find out.
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