(Photo courtesy of JacksonsMMA.com)

Greg Jackson wants to get one thing straight: he did not start the nipple tweak.  He doesn’t endorse it and doesn’t seem to understand it any more than the rest of us, and frankly he’s getting a little tired of being associated with the idea of grown men pinching their own nipples on TV.  And yet, as long as his fighters keep winning with it, he’s resigned to the fact that it may not be going anywhere.

This is just one of the fascinating topics we covered in our exclusive talk with trainer Greg Jackson.  Read on and see what else he had to say.

CagePotato.com: Thanks for talking with me Greg.  I know you must be busy with so many different guys fighting in different organizations.  Tell me, what’s a typical month like for you?  Like the next thirty days, who have you got fighting?

Well let’s see, in the next thirty days we’ve got Donald Cerrone fighting in the WEC in San Diego, and then immediately after that we’ve got Georges St. Pierre defending his title against BJ Penn in Vegas on the 31st, and the after that I don’t have anyone until Nate Marquardt fighting in England on February 21st.  After that it heats up again in March.

Does it ever get hard to keep track of so many different guys and their different game plans and strategies?

It’s my job.  It’s like anything.  If you’ve got a long day ahead of you, you’ve got a long day.  I don’t do anything else.  I don’t manage.  I just train guys and make sure they’re following their own personal growth plan and at the same time that they’re training specifically for their opponent.  That’s all I do all day long.  Sometimes it seems overwhelming, like when I step back and realize I’ve got eleven different game plans working, but as long as I take it one at a time it’s not a big deal.

B.J. Penn keeps insisting that the only reason he lost to GSP the first time was because he gassed out, and says that won’t happen again.  What do you think when you hear some of the stuff he says?