“Young talent is definitely something that you have to respect,” he admits. “But also the knowledge in all the different fights that I had, you gotta respect that too. It’s not like I’m an old man. I’m 32, but I’m just now starting to feel like after ten years that I’m really figuring out who the hell I am.”
That’s bad news for Topuria, who, at 23 with a 9-0 record, is precisely the young talent Jackson is referring to. Yet that doesn’t mean Jackson is dismissing his opponent, grumbling “Get off my lawn” to the Georgian prospect. It’s exactly the opposite, and before I even get to ask Jackson if he’s of the mindset that he just needs to show up and fight without any pre-fight homework, he reels off a detailed scouting report, ending with, “I definitely respect the kid.”
Pretty impressive, Mr. Jackson.
“You gotta respect everyone,” he laughs. “You’re getting in there and it’s a fistfight.”
And though he admits that he’s not staying up until 3am on a Friday night to watch Pancrase fights from Japan, there is plenty of prep work getting done at the Fortis MMA gym in Dallas along with his longtime coach Sayif Saud.
“I don’t sit around and watch people’s fights unless I am training with them,” Jackson said. “So the only fights I watch are the ones when my guys fight. I used to be obsessed, but when you go into camp mode, you want to break down someone’s style and you want to make sure that you’re focused on yourself and how you can prevent yourself from giving them the advantage. I like to watch the film and get a really good assessment and make sure that I have a good understanding of who the people are. After that, I do focus on myself more than trying to beat the opponent; I try to focus on beating myself and how they’re going to try to use their style against me. That’s why everyone under Sayif is so successful. He does so much of that for us. You might think you have a gameplan, and then whenever we talk about it, it’s gonna completely change because he’ll tell you what’s gonna happen. And when he says something’s gonna happen, I would say 99 percent of the time it happens. That’s why we have so much respect for him at Fortis as a team.”
