Jackson Wink MMA Academy

The Greg Jackson era

Greg Jackson's MMA coaching career began in the early 1990s in Albuquerque, New Mexico, training local wrestlers and BJJ practitioners in early-MMA crossover. By the mid-2000s, Jackson had developed a reputation as the most-systematic game-plan coach in MMA — fighters who joined his program were given fight-specific strategic plans backed by extensive opponent film study.

In 2009, Jackson formalized the partnership with Mike Winkeljohn (a striking coach who had been operating his own gym in Albuquerque) to create the Jackson Wink MMA Academy. The Jackson Wink era from 2009 onward has been the most-decorated coaching partnership in MMA.

The roster

• Jon Jones — UFC LHW + heavyweight champion (until 2025 retirement)
• Holly Holm — UFC women's bantamweight champion (2015 KO of Ronda Rousey)
• Carlos Condit — UFC welterweight interim champion
• Donald Cerrone (formerly) — UFC's most-active fighter
• Diego Sanchez (formerly) — UFC welterweight contender
• Anthony Pettis (briefly) — UFC lightweight champion
• Various regional contracted fighters

The roster has churned more than at AKA or CKB. Some of the highest-profile departures (Condit, Cerrone, Sanchez) reflected coaching disagreements or contract-management issues. Jones has been the most-stable long-term Jackson Wink athlete.

The game-plan system

Jackson Wink's defining feature is the game-plan-first approach. Every fight preparation includes:

• Opponent film study: 8-12 weeks of breaking down the opponent's previous bouts, organized by phase (round 1 setups, championship-rounds patterns, post-loss adjustments).
• Specific technique selection: the game plan identifies 5-7 specific techniques to attack the opponent's vulnerabilities and 5-7 techniques to avoid the opponent's strengths.
• Sparring partner curation: 3-5 sparring partners are brought in who specifically replicate the opponent's style, height, reach, and stance.
• Round-by-round rehearsal: the bout is rehearsed in 5-minute simulations against the curated sparring partners.
• Contingency planning: 3-4 fallback plans for different round-by-round scenarios.

The most-famous game-plan deployments:

• Holly Holm vs Ronda Rousey (UFC 193): the distance-management plan that produced the head-kick KO of an undefeated champion.
• Jon Jones vs Daniel Cormier (UFC 182): the oblique-kick game plan that compromised Cormier's takedown setups.
• Jon Jones vs Chael Sonnen (UFC 159): the back-take game plan that finished a wrestling-base challenger.

The striking development

Mike Winkeljohn's striking program is the technical complement to Jackson's strategic work. Winkeljohn's specialty is timing-based counter striking — the ability to read an opponent's strike loading and counter before the strike lands.

Jones's career-defining strikes (the oblique kicks, the spinning back elbows, the front-kick stop-and-counter) are largely Winkeljohn-developed techniques. Holly Holm's distance-and-counter game came directly from Winkeljohn's kickboxing background.

The Cerrone era and the public-facing controversy

The 2010s Jackson Wink roster included Donald Cerrone, who became one of the most-active and most-marketable UFC fighters of the era. The eventual fallout between Cerrone and Jackson Wink (Cerrone left in 2017 citing coaching disagreements) became a public-facing dispute that revealed some of the tensions in Jackson's coaching style.

Jackson Wink's approach — heavily structured, game-plan-driven, with limited deviation tolerance — works for fighters who buy into the system (Jones, Holm) but can chafe with fighters who prefer instinctive in-cage adaptation (Cerrone, Diego Sanchez).

The post-Jones era

Jon Jones's October 2025 retirement coincides with a broader Jackson Wink roster transition. The 2024-2025 active roster is the smallest at championship-eligibility level it's been since 2009. Whether the gym maintains its championship-tier coaching status into the late 2020s depends on the development of the next-wave roster.

The legacy

Jackson Wink is the canonical example of the game-plan-first MMA gym. The combined title-defense math of Jones (eleven), Holm (one but title-changing), and Condit (interim title) makes the gym one of the most-decorated training bases in MMA history.

The game-plan template has influenced every subsequent MMA coaching staff. Even the AKA, CKB, and ATT systems incorporate Jackson Wink-style game-plan elements into their preparation — though none have matched the systematic depth that Jackson and Winkeljohn brought to the craft.