Rashad Evans: Greg Jackson’s Mental Training Broke Men Down

He's a guy that I feel is underappreciated. Nate Markhart, when he was at the very top of his game, was a fucking assassin. Nate Markhart was a... Ooh, that knockout of Tyron Woodley in Strike Force to this day is one of the nastiest in tight elbow combination knockouts, I think of like a video game knockout. See Nate Markhart was one of those guys, I'm like, oh man, you'll get anxiety before training and practice because you knew it was gonna be a hard go. My training growing up in the sport was just, it was difficult, man. Training with GSP, Keith Jardine, Nate Markhart, Joey Villasenor, Mike Van Arzdale, and even Ali Abdullaziz was even up in the mix too. But it was training with guys who, it was a hard go all the time. And Nate was one of those guys that I'm just like, oh my gosh, this dude is not gonna get tired. You know what I'm saying? He's good everywhere, he's super strong. It was just like one of those, one of those like, all right, I gotta bring it in order to compete today. Yeah, he was in that, he had this weird transition between UFC and Strike Force where people kind of forgot about him. And then when he came back to the UFC, he had some real good fights, but he had already had a really long career. He had already had some really tough fights and then really tough fights in training too, right? Yeah, yeah, and that's the thing, like back then, we weren't really too smart. Like Greg would kill us in training. Like we'd do some shit that you'd be like, oh my gosh. Like one time Greg had us doing like some buddy carries. We're on the side of the Sandia Mountains and there was like, you know, it was like two or three feet and you'll fall to like your death. And then we had to do like these buddy carries, these wedding carries where I'm holding Keith like this. Get the fuck out of here. Yeah, and you know, like this. You'll fall to your death and like, if you make a mistake, you know, there wasn't much room for mistake. If I would have fell down, then we would have fell. But you take, and we had to rotate every 60 steps. Fuck that. And Greg was like, Greg was always on the like, you know, like mental, like, yo, you gotta be ready to die. You gotta be ready to face death. Let's get it, seek death. Meanwhile, he's such a sweetie in the corner. I know, but- In the corner, he's, hey, how you doing, Rashad? Oh my gosh, you think he's looking great? That's why he does it, because he knows what he did to you in training. Right. Right. Right. I can't imagine that buddy carries or wedding carry like that. And you're literally, if you fall, you die. You both die. Yeah, and then there was like one little slip in these. Like, all right, let's change things up. Go on his back. And I'm like, what? Yeah. Fuck out of here, Greg. You go on his back, bitch. What are you doing? What are you talking about? Yeah. That's so crazy. It was crazy, man. But that was a good time back then, man. Just mental toughness training, huh? Yeah, that was a mental toughness training. Well, you guys thought Albuquerque team was always known for having crazy endurance. I mean, that had to come from some of that grit had to come from those hill workouts you guys would do. We had a lot of grit because of those workouts that we did. We did one where we do the sand dunes. Mm. Oh, the worst sand dunes. You would cry, like you had to carry somebody up doing the sand dunes. And then if you didn't carry them all the way up, then you had to do it again. And so you completed it. Like you would literally see grown ass men crying. Just like, I can't do no more. That's a good way to get injured too, though, unfortunately. Yeah, it's like there's this fine line between pushing really hard and fucking somebody up. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think now they've kind of figured it out. But just the mental aspect, it paid off big dividends. Like now I'll talk to Dana White and Dana like, bro, you were so fucking crazy back then. You were so paranoid. Dana White impression. Yeah. You were paranoid back then? I mean, I was a fighter, man. Fighters are always paranoid. You have to be paranoid if you're a fighter. You have to think that everybody's trying to take something from you, right? It's just a mindset. But he'll say I was crazy, I was paranoid because I didn't really trust him back then. But I'm just, he's a promoter. Right, and then on top of that, you had Greg, Greg, Greg, Jackson, always telling you that they want to get you out of there, man. They want to get you out the UFC, man. Go ahead and just quit, Evans. Just quit right now, man. I know you want to give up. They want to get you out of here anyways, man. Like, no, no, I ain't going to quit. Show them you're not going to quit. I don't want to see it. Let's go. Jesus Christ. Yeah, it was a good time over there.