UFC 137: Greg Jackson Will Not Train Georges St. Pierre or Carlos Condit

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Coming out of today's bombshell announcement that Carlos Condit would be replacing Nick Diaz to face Georges St. Pierre for the UFC Welterweight title at UFC 137, several questions immediately began to surface. One of the big ones - how would Greg Jackson, trainer to both St. Pierre and Condit, handle this situation?

Now, just a few hours after the big news, we have our answer. Jackson will not train or corner either man. He spoke to Ariel Helwani at MMA Fighting to clarify:

Teammate protocols are pretty clear in this situation so everybody knows what happening. I step out, the other coaches -- John [Danaher], Phil [Nurse] and Firas [Zahabi] -- will take care of GSP and probably [Mike] Winkeljohn and some of the other guys here will take care of Carlos. But I step out of it, so I won't be cornering either guy. They'll fight each other. Those are the new teammate protocols. We knew this would be coming -- it will probably be coming again --but this time we are very well prepared.

Jackson goes on to state that Condit will still be training in Albuquerque, but Jackson won't be working one on one with him on the kind of game planning he normally handles. St. Pierre only sporadically trains in New Mexico these days, instead spending his time in Montreal where Jackson comes to him, and likely will not be in Albuquerque at all between now and the Condit fight.

This is a shift from some of the Jackson team members' stances in the past. For years, Keith Jardine and Rashad Evans were very vocal that they would not fight each, with Jackson supporting both men's positions. Other Jackson fighters have expressed a similar loyalty and unwillingness to fight a teammate. That blew up earlier this year when Jon Jones agreed to fight Rashad Evans, causing Evans to become very frustrated with his former teammate, trainer, and camp. For Jackson to state that there is a clear protocol shows that they have hopefully learned from the Evans vs. Jones situation, and are now prepared for their teammates to fight, if necessary. It will be interesting to see if this opens the door to future teammate vs. teammate fights down the line.

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interesting

So the question is, who will that hurt more?

If GSP gets into trouble early in the fight he may stumble a bit without Yoda to calm him down in between rounds. On the other hand, he's been in a lot of big fights and doesn't necessarily need as much game planning help as Condit does.

I have no idea man, both of these guys have relied on Jackson to get them as far as they have. Condit has been on a tear lately. He has been showing some serious power as of late. GSP may grind out a victory, but Condit has a way of making people regret laying on top of him. I can't wait for this fight! Problem is I don't know who to root for! I guess it's win-win for me. Either way one of my guys is coming out on top!

Georges will win in a cake walk. Sorry but Condit is not in the same league as GSP. Condit will bring WEC skills and Georges will bring UFC skills and we will see the finish people are waiting for.