When Dan Hardy steps into the Octagon to fight Carlos Condit at UFC 120 on Sunday, he'll be facing his second straight opponent who has Greg Jackson in his corner. The last time the fight didn't go so well, and Hardy is concerned that it won't go so well this time, either.
That's not to say that Hardy, who's coming off a loss to UFC welterweight champion Georges St. Pierre in March, is worried about losing to Condit -- he says he's confident that he'll win. But Hardy says he doesn't like the fighting style that Jackson teaches, and he believes Jackson-trained fighters exercise far too much caution in the cage.
"My biggest concern is that he'll fight a Greg Jackson style fight and run away for 15 minutes," Hardy said in a live chat with MMAFighting.com readers. "It's not that I don't like Greg Jackson's style but I don't like fighting guys he trains because they always take the safest route and that gets boring, they want to send it to the judges and that gets boring after a while."
There's some truth to what Hardy is saying -- Jackson makes no secret that he wants his fighters to win fights by inflicting punishment while avoiding taking any punishment themselves. And I admire Hardy's fighting style, which tends to be more aggressive.
But while it's reasonable to be concerned that overly cautious fighters can take some of the excitement out of the sport, I disagree with Hardy's assessment of Jackson's fighters. There's nothing boring about executing a smart, effective strategy, and smart, effective strategies are what make Jackson's fighters interesting to watch.
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