Lightweight contender Melvin Guillard found himself without a training camp on Monday, and now the former Blackzilian may be tagged with a jail sentence to boot.MMA Junkie reports that Guillard is facing two assault charges in New Mexico, bot…
Lightweight contender Melvin Guillard found himself without a training camp on Monday, and now the former Blackzilian may be tagged with a jail sentence to boot.
MMA Junkie reports that Guillard is facing two assault charges in New Mexico, both of which could net him a year’s worth of jail time:
Adding to concerns, Guillard has two outstanding assault charges against him from separate incidents in Albuquerque in 2010, records show.
According to Bernalillo County (N.M.) court records, Guillard currently faces five charges: two misdemeanor counts of aggravated battery, to which he pled not guilty. Three misdemeanor counts of failure to appear in court were settled.
No official statement has been made by the Blackzilians, Greg Jackson’s MMA or Authentic Sports Management regarding Guillard, whose jury trial is currently scheduled for April 10.
However, this sheds some light on the situation regarding Team Jackson-Winkeljohn’s refusal to re-recruitGuillard into its camp, as legal issues surrounding “The Young Assassin” most likely led the New Mexico group’s staff to disown him.
As sources within Greg Jackson’s MMA told MMA Junkie, Guillard‘s announcement “caught them off-guard,” as they quickly had to refute the news.
Whatever personal issues might exist between Guillard and Greg Jackson’s MMA are unknown, although MMA Junkie notes that the team was “unanimous” in barring the former Blackzilian from coming back to the camp:
“He’s not allowed back here,” said the source, who asked for anonymity given the sensitive nature of the talks and the team’s history with the fighter.
Guillard was unreachable for comment, and his last known management firm, Authentic Sports Management, refused to confirm whether he is still a client.
Guillard apparently won’t be going back to the Blackzilians‘ camp in Florida either, as his profile is nowhere to be found on its fighter roster.
Until his court date is settled, he may be unable to compete in the UFC for the time being. That marks another setback on his MMA career, as Guillard is currently suffering a career-low 1-4 losing stretch, dating back to a UFC 136 loss against Joe Lauzon.
Since then, Guillard has dropped fights to strong competition in Jim Miller, former teammate Donald Cerrone and former WEC lightweight champion Jamie Varner. His lone win in the past 20 months came in a unanimous decision at UFC 148 against Brazilian fighter Fabricio Camoes.
Lightweight contender Melvin Guillard is coming off a rough stretch with the Blackzilians in Florida, but he’s itching to return to his former home at Greg Jackson’s MMA.However, it seems that he isn’t wanted back.According to Bleacher Report’s own Dam…
Lightweight contender Melvin Guillard is coming off a rough stretch with the Blackzilians in Florida, but he’s itching to return to his former home at Greg Jackson’s MMA.
However, it seems that he isn’t wanted back.
According to Bleacher Report’s own Damon Martin, sources within Team Jackson-Winkeljohn claim that Guillard is not welcome to rejoin the New Mexico camp, refuting earlier statements made by Guillard on his Twitter account.
Overall, the story turned around in just a day, as summed up in the following tweets:
Im no longer a blackzillian I went back to where I belong Jackson’s:-):-):-):-):-) — Melvin Guillard (@Young__Assassin) March 24, 2013
I’m hoping to find out more later but I’ve been told specifically by sources that Melvin Guillard will NOT be back at Jackson’s MMA — Damon Martin (@DamonMartin) March 25, 2013
Sherdog also corroborated the report with “a source close to the situation” stating that Guillard “will not be granted access to train” with the team at Greg Jackson’s MMA.
Moreover, whoever runs the official Twitter profile for the camp is taking the same stance, repostingSherdog‘s story on their main feed.
Guillard has not since updated his Twitter profile.
Additionally, he may continue to remain silent due to a recent MMA Junkie report regarding his two outstanding assault charges and three misdemeanor charges in New Mexico—not to mention this tidbit regarding his relationship with his old team:
“The Young Assassin” had angered the team in interviews he gave about a move this past year to Florida’s “Blackzilians” team, a source close to the MMA team told MMA Junkie.
“He’s not allowed back here,” said the source, who asked for anonymity given the sensitive nature of the talks and the team’s history with the fighter.
Everything said so far flies in direct conflict with prior statements that Guillard made previously made about his split with the camp.
During a January 2012 interview with MMA Weekly, Guillard stated that his move to the Blackzilians‘ camp in Florida was fueled by a desire to improve his skills and not any personal grudge.
That much appeared to be true even when Guillard faced his friend Cerrone at UFC 150, losing a one-round war that resulted in a “Fight of the Night” bonus for both men along with an extra “Knockout of the Night” bonus for Cerrone.
Although Guillard and Cerrone were very friendly before, during and after their match, that apparently didn’t represent the scope of his relationship with the rest of the Greg Jackson’s MMA team. But at the moment, Guillard currently finds himself without a training camp to call home.
McKinley Noble is an MMA conspiracy theorist and tech writer. His work has appeared in GamePro, Macworld, PC World, 1UP, NVision, The Los Angeles Times, FightFans Radio, MMA Mania and Bleacher Report. Talk with him on Twitter.
(“When I first started The Blackzilian Reverse Diet, I was just a scrawny welterweight fighting in the sport’s highest promotion. But just LOOK AT ME NOW!)
It would be no hyperbole to say that The Blackzilians are less a training camp and more a black hole (PUNS!) of suckitude that is slowly draining the last remaining scraps of talent from its fighters before it inevitably spits them out as empty, dry husks void of any discernible skills whatsoever. Alright, there may be a little hyperbole in that statement, but to say that the members of The Blackzilians have been underperforming since the camp was established in 2011 is no exaggeration. Alistair Overeem just had his head treated like a speed bag at UFC 156, Rashad Evans just put on his worst performance in years (at the same event, no less), and Melvin Guillard has dropped 4 of his past 5 fights including an inexplicably timid performance in what was supposed to be a grudge match against Jamie Varner at UFC 155.
That’s not to say that The Blackzilians are doing everything wrong, it just appears that they are relying on the pure talent of their fighters to lead them rather than a team of disciplined coaches. But in light of the recent criticisms aimed at the camp from news outlets across the MMA blogosphere, whateverweight Anthony Johnson — fresh off a unanimous decision victory over Andrei Arlovski at WSoF 2 — told MMAJunkie that said criticisms are “unfair.” Here’s why:
Every team has losses. Losses don’t define who you are.
People always want to talk about the losses, not the wins. Everybody talks about Rashad’s loss. Everybody talks about Alistair’s loss. But Vitor Belfort is one of my training partners. He just high-kicked Michael Bisping (for a knockout win). You all talked about that for five minutes. You’re all still talking about the losses we had. What about the wins we had?
True, Anthony, we should be talking more about the wins you guys had. The problem is that those wins are coming fewer and farther between than with the guys over at Team Hammer House.
(“When I first started The Blackzilian Reverse Diet, I was just a scrawny welterweight fighting in the sport’s highest promotion. But just LOOK AT ME NOW!)
It would be no hyperbole to say that The Blackzilians are less a training camp and more a black hole (PUNS!) of suckitude that is slowly draining the last remaining scraps of talent from its fighters before it inevitably spits them out as empty, dry husks void of any discernible skills whatsoever. Alright, there may be a little hyperbole in that statement, but to say that the members of The Blackzilians have been underperforming since the camp was established in 2011 is no exaggeration. Alistair Overeem just had his head treated like a speed bag at UFC 156, Rashad Evans just put on his worst performance in years (at the same event, no less), and Melvin Guillard has dropped 4 of his past 5 fights including an inexplicably timid performance in what was supposed to be a grudge match against Jamie Varner at UFC 155.
That’s not to say that The Blackzilians are doing everything wrong, it just appears that they are relying on the pure talent of their fighters to lead them rather than a team of disciplined coaches. But in light of the recent criticisms aimed at the camp from news outlets across the MMA blogosphere, whateverweight Anthony Johnson — fresh off a unanimous decision victory over Andrei Arlovski at WSoF 2 – told MMAJunkie that said criticisms are “unfair.” Here’s why:
Every team has losses. Losses don’t define who you are.
People always want to talk about the losses, not the wins. Everybody talks about Rashad’s loss. Everybody talks about Alistair’s loss. But Vitor Belfort is one of my training partners. He just high-kicked Michael Bisping (for a knockout win). You all talked about that for five minutes. You’re all still talking about the losses we had. What about the wins we had?
True, Anthony, we should be talking more about the wins you guys had. The problem is that those wins are coming fewer and farther between than with the guys over at Team Hammer House. With the exception of Johnson, only two guys in the camp are currently above .500 since joining. And while Belfort’s recent success can be partially attributed to his new camp — if they were the ones who suggested he get on TRT, we guess — some of The Blackzilians’ hottest prospects (Ryan Jimmo, Siyar Bahadurzada, etc.) are all coming of losses that came after they joined the camp. A simple inconvenience or a sign of things to come?
In either case, it appears that at least one member of The Blackzilians, UFC lightweight Melvin Guillard, is fed up with the lack of results, as he recently announced that he will be returning to Team Jackson, whom he compiled a 5-0 record with during his stint with the team in 2010-early 2011. Guillard tweeted the news yesterday:
Im no longer a blackzillian I went back to where I belong Jackson’s:-):-):-):-):-)
During his time with Team Jackson (whom he joined prior to his UFC 109 bout with Ronys Torres), Guillard showcased a newfound grappling prowess and an overall smarter approach to the game that he had in years past. The fact that he can’t even spell the name of his now former camp correctly just goes to show where Guillard’s heart is truly at.
So, Potato Nation, are we not giving The Blackzilians the respect they deserve, or does Guillard’s departure signify that the camp is truly not up to the standard set by that of its fellow camps?
For once things seemed to be going well for the Blackzilians, the embattled super camp out of Boca Raton, Fla. The team’s losses, most notably poor performances from superstars Rashad Evans and Alistair Overeem, were verging on the unacceptable, becomi…
For once things seemed to be going well for the Blackzilians, the embattled super camp out of Boca Raton, Fla. The team’s losses, most notably poor performances from superstars Rashad Evans and Alistair Overeem, were verging on the unacceptable, becoming fodder for bloggers and internet memes. Finally, at long last, things were turning around.
In England, Tyrone Spong, the team’s fearsome kickboxing star, dismantled former K-1 great Remy Bonjasky with startling ease. A right hook in the second round finished off the man who three times claimed the K-1 World Grand Prix championship.
Across the Atlantic, in New Jersey, Anthony Johnson, 60 pounds heavier than in his UFC heyday, stood in the pocket with former UFC heavyweight champion Andrei Arlovski and had his hand raised after a very competitive fight. Johnson indicated the heavyweight experiment was over after just a single bout. Though he acquitted himself well, and looked as skilled as ever, his future was somewhere below 206 pounds. And it was a future that, despite weight problems, still looked very bright indeed.
But while his teammates were celebrating, UFC lightweight Melvin Guillard was quietly packing his bags and hustling his way out of town. Once a fighter on the path to a title shot, Guillard had lost four of his last five and was on the doorstep of oblivion—the fast path right out of the UFC. The solution, he believed, wouldn’t be found in Florida. Guillard decided, instead, to pack his bags.
Though Guillard won’t apparently be joining his old team as he hoped, his departure from the Blackzilians was confirmed by Bleacher Report. It’s a seismic shift from when I met up with him in July of last year, Guillard seemed more than content with the Blackzilians team. He was relaxed, bordering on ecstatic, glowingly singing the praises of Glenn Robinson, the Blackzilians kingpin, who created the team as a way to help build his Jaco clothing brand:
“(Glenn) basically offered me and my wife a better life. There’s a lot of great things I could say about him and there’s a lot of great things I love about this team. Our team, right now, is strong as a family. Look around. This is a family. My biggest drive, right now, other than wanting to win and be a champion, is to give him something back that he’s given me,” Guillard said, an evangelist’s passion in his voice. “I’m so confident to go in the ring. Whatever happens, happens. But I’m going to make sure I’m controlling the outcome. Because the guy that I’m fighting, he’s not better than half the guys at my gym.”
Guillard was especially thrilled at the promotion of Mario Sperry, the Brazilian jiu-jitsu legend and former Pride star, to the position of head coach. Sperry and a team of jiu-jitsu stalwarts seemed the perfect answer for what had been a nagging problem for Guillard for much of his career—submission defense:
“That’s definitely a confidence builder. We want to be a winning team. Our team here is no stronger or weaker than when I was at Jackson’s (the MMA super camp Guillard used to call home. It’s also the home of his next opponent, Donald Cerrone). We have the same chemistry here. The energy in the locker room, you couldn’t cut it with a knife. I feel like, for the first time in my life, I’m on a professional team. I feel like, when I go to work, I’m going into an NFL locker room.
“That’s the feeling we have when I go into the gym. The facility, it speaks for itself. But to me, it’s the guys in the gym that make the facility. We have an amazing facility. But without the right guys, it would just be another room with walls. We definitely have the X-factor in our gym.”
Eight months, and consecutive losses, later, Guillard has decided to cut his losses. He won five in a row with the Jackson-Winkeljohn team before moving to the Blackzilians, a move that was jinxed from the start. He lost his first fight under their banner, a 47-second blowout loss to Joe Lauzon, and his career has been in freefall ever since.
At the time, Guillard’s move way from Jackson-Winkeljohn was a curious one. He was better than ever under Jackson’s tutelage and raved about the camp’s impact on his fight game. Coach Mike Winkeljohn told me at the time that they were trying to harness Guillard’s considerable physical tools, hoping to reign in his bursts of fury that coaches thought stemmed from fear:
“That skittishness was a lack of confidence in knowing he could be in the proper place at the proper time. To keep that destructive behavior from hurting him or those attacks from hurting him. To keep from getting caught. Through repetition, through throwing certain sparring partners at him to do these things, keeping him calm.
“I think it takes time and repetition. And it’s working. He is getting better. He’s becoming a much smarter fighter. He already had all of the God gifted tools and the physical aspect. Reaction time and more speed than anybody out there. But now he’s starting to understand when and how to use it…I had to get that into Melvin’s mind. That he has the ability to control the distance and control where the fight is at. He doesn’t have to get excited if he doesn’t want to.”
Guillard wasn’t alone among Blackzilians in his UFC struggles. Though the team has a winning record overall since its inception, in the Octagon they’ve gone just 11-19-1. In their last 10 fights in the promotion, the team is a combined 1-9—a record that seems to coincide with Sperry’s ascension to the head coaching position.
Before Sperry took the lead role, former NCAA wrestling champion and UFC competitor Mike Van Arsdale, a long-time assistant under Greg Jackson, was the head coach. Under his guidance, the Blackzilians were an even .500, 8-8, in the UFC and 21-14-1 overall. Since his departure, their UFC record has slipped to 3-11-1.
“With Mike Van Arsdale, some of the guys loved him, and some didn’t,” Robinson told Bloody Elbow’s Stephanie Daniels last year. “There was some tension that grew during the Rashad camp, because he and Rashad were very close, and he was spending a lot of his time with Rashad, so some of the guys felt neglected. At the same time, that’s not why he left. One day, he came in my office and said he needed to spend more time with his family in Arizona. It wasn’t about any fighters saying they didn’t like him. The reason he left is because he wanted to be with his kids and be a good father.”
“I’m glad he’s gone,” Guillard said during a media conference call last year. “I told Glenn when I first got here, the guy wasn’t a head coach. No disrespect to coach Van Arsdale, but he was never a head coach at Jackson’s…
“It’s kinda hard to learn how to be a champion from a guy who never was a champion, or a guy who was basically brought to the UFC as a set-up fight. I just never had that level of respect for him. The way he would talk to guys on the team and he felt like he was this big superstar, but I knew the real Van Arsdale.”
Whether the team’s decline since Van Arsdale’s departure is correlative or causative is undetermined. What is undeniable is the pressing need for improvement. Sperry, too, recently left the team. Blackzilian fighters are now acting as their own head trainers, a situation that is untenable in the long term.
Careers in MMA are too short, each loss too important, to allow mediocrity, or worse. And, like it or not, the Blackzilians will be judged primarily on their UFC results—the Octagon is still the ultimate proving grounds, and success there will determine perception. And for Robinson, whose primary MMA business is selling Jaco merchandise, perception is everything. No one wants to walk around in a loser’s gear—and if they aren’t careful, loser is the tag that will stick to the Blackzilians.
UFC lightweight Melvin Guillard has decided to exit the Blackzilians and return to his former team under the tutelage of coach Greg Jackson. Guillard, who had been working with the Florida-based team since the second half of 2011, announced via Twitter…
UFC lightweight Melvin Guillard has decided to exit the Blackzilians and return to his former team under the tutelage of coach Greg Jackson.
Guillard, who had been working with the Florida-based team since the second half of 2011, announced via Twitter that he was leaving the training camp to go back to New Mexico.
The former Ultimate Fighter season 2 cast member first began working with Greg Jackson and Mike Winkeljohn in 2009 after bouncing around several different teams since his first fights all the way back in 2002.
Under the direction of Jackson and Winkeljohn, Guillard found his greatest success inside the UFC Octagon, picking up several key wins in the division including victories over Evan Dunham, Jeremy Stephens and Shane Roller.
Just when it appeared that Guillard was on the cusp of making a run at the UFC lightweight title, he suffered a loss to Joe Lauzon at UFC 136 that derailed his championship plans.
At the time, Guillard was splitting time between the camp in New Mexico and his recently former Blackzilian team in Florida. Immediately following the loss to Lauzon, Guillard committed himself to the Blackzilian team and moved lock, stock and barrel to Florida to train there.
Guillard told MMAWeekly Radio that he had no blood leaving Jackson’s MMA, and he would always respect the trainers that got him where he was in the sport.
I didn’t leave Jackson’s in a bad way. I love those coaches to death, love that team, and if anything ever occurs and I have to go back to Jackson’s, I hope I’m still welcome, because I didn’t leave in the wrong way,” Guillard said in 2011.
“One thing my mother taught me when I was a kid growing up ‘You never leave home bad because you never know when you might need to come back through that door.’ I hope the coaches there and the team there still love for me and care for me the way they did when I was performing for them.
Following his exit from Jackson’s team, Guillard suffered a tough streak of fights in the UFC, going 1-3 over his last four fights. Currently, Guillard is suffering the ill effects of a two-fight losing streak.
Now Guillard returns to his old team at Jackson’s where his career flourished the most since he’s been in the UFC.
If he can return similar results as the last time he worked with the famed coach and his trainers in New Mexico, Guillard could quickly climb back into the top 10 of the lightweight division in the UFC.
Damon Martin is a Featured Columnist for Bleacher Report
In the fast-moving world of mixed martial arts, fans and pundits alike can’t help but gaze into their crystal ball. It’s why we always want to hear one fighter call out their next opponent as soon as Joe Rogan hands them a microphone after a big win.Ho…
In the fast-moving world of mixed martial arts, fans and pundits alike can’t help but gaze into their crystal ball. It’s why we always want to hear one fighter call out their next opponent as soon as Joe Rogan hands them a microphone after a big win.
However, not everyone’s future looks so bright. Some Zuffa fighters are on the cusp of being released. Others are stuck outside of the UFC looking in. There are even some top names who fight in the Octagon who simply don’t have much to look forward to.
Here is a look at 10 fighters whose futures are looking pretty bleak.
Lightweight contender Melvin Guillard found himself without a training camp on Monday, and now the former Blackzilian may be tagged with a jail sentence to boot.
