Between Rounds, Greg Jackson’s Advice Depends on the Fighter

Greg Jackson, on “Beatdown,” discussing what he tells fighters about the scorecards between rounds:

“There’s no hard and fast rules. You have to understand the personality that you’re dealing with. There are people that are very emotional, and if you say, ‘Listen, you lost that round,’ you’ll get them on a real negative track where they start questioning things. If you say, ‘Listen, that was a close round, but you’re really starting to come on; you need to take over this round’ -- that kind of stuff is a much better way than saying, ‘Listen, you lost.’ But there are people that you say, ‘OK, you know what? We lost that round,’ even if you think you didn’t lose that round because you never know. You just never know. You always should be motivating. Sometimes you tell people, ‘It’s probably one round to one round, and you need this third round.’ … For me it takes a while to learn how a guy works, like what works better with the fighter. It usually takes me a fight or two to really kind of get the hang of it, and after that I’m pretty good. Sometimes I can click right away and sometimes it takes me longer, but average, it takes me a fight or two and then I’ll say, ‘This guy responded the best to this.’”

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