Diego Sanchez has been one of the figureheads at the famous Jackson-Wink camp in Alberquerque for many years, but it seem the veteran UFC star has decided it’s time that they parted ways.
“All I know is I wasn’t learning,” Sanchez explained at a UFC 239 media day yesterday. “I wasn’t growing as a mixed martial artist, that they were teaching me with the knowledge and information as trainers that they were doing. They were just basically going through the motions with Diego Sanchez.”
Sanchez, who fights Michael Chiesa at UFC 239, went on to explain how he felt he was being overlooked by both Greg Jackson and Mike Winkeljohn over the last few years.
“For the past three years, Diego Sanchez (has) really being doing the Bruce Lee type of style training: going in early, getting my thousands of reps in and training myself,” he said. “Obviously everyone knows my grappling credentials – getting some grappling classes in and grappling rolls in. Go get my rounds in with the young bucks and do my thing in the gym.
“But come fight time, you’d get a couple mitt sessions with Winkeljohn, never really learning anything, just kind of tuning up what I already had,” he added. “With Greg Jackson, it was maybe one or two privates a camp, but never really any true love – the type of love that a trainer should have for his fighter.”
