Greg Jackson and Mike Winkeljohn's Mixed Martial Arts. It's a very long title for what has become the single best martial arts academy on the planet.
There are other great MMA camps out there; some gyms like Black House have more UFC title belts than Jackson's MMA.
The thing that makes Greg Jackson's gym so special is Jackson's knack for taking good fighters and making them much better. We've seen it with Georges St-Pierre, Jon Jones, Clay Guida and Rashad Evans to name just a few. These are good fighters who improved in a big way after Jackson and his team took them in.
In Spike TV's final offering of The Ultimate Fighter, we saw some really amazing fights and fighters. Just two of the sixteen fighters on the show came from Jackson's camp: John Dodson and Diego Brandao.
John Dodson joined forces with Josh Ferguson and Louis Gaudinot—all of them natural flyweights—to form their own small posse they dubbed "The Death Leprechauns." The minor infamy generated by the Leprechauns telling Team Bisping the fight picks was amusing, but quickly forgotten.
It was Dodson's fighting prowess that really makes you stand up and take notice. He's a natural flyweight, yet he won The Ultimate Fighter Finale at bantamweight. And he didn't just win all his fights, he knocked out three of his four opponents, including T.J. Dillashaw in the finale.
For his own part, Diego Brandao knocked out everyone in the first round en route to the finale. His TUF 14 finale fight against Dennis Bermudez was probably the best one-round fight I've ever seen. Diego, the amazing knockout artist from the show, pulled off one of the most amazing submissions I've ever seen to win a fight.
Plenty has already been written about the fights and the TV show.
But how good is Jackson’s and Winkeljohn's MMA? They sent two fighters to compete in The Ultimate Fighter. Both came away as TUF champions.
Not too shabby Mr. Jackson.
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