Last year Rashad Evans famously 'divorced' Jackson's MMA and moved on to Imperial Athletics in Boca Raton, FL. A group emerged there that includes Bigfoot Silva, Danillo Villefort, Jorge Santiago, Anthony Johnson, JZ Cavalcante, who collectively call themselves The Blackzilians.
Guillard trained with the team for a few weeks before his losing effort vs, Joe Lauzon at UFC 136, and has now decided to make the change permanent.
Guillard fights Jim Miller at the UFC on FX card this Friday.
“Both camps are great," Guillard told MMAWeekly Radio. "Both sets of coaches are awesome. It’s just a decision I had to make for myself professionally. Did I want to split the time? Yeah, I did, but it’s kind of like trying to work for Exxon and work for Shell. You won’t be able to split your time between both. Cause both of those companies wouldn’t allow it."
“So it came to one of those points in my life where I had to make a grown-up decision. Kind of an executive decision, and this is the decision I made.”
“I didn’t leave Jackson’s in a bad way. I love those coaches to death, love that team, and if anything ever occurs and I have to go back to Jackson’s, I hope I’m still welcome, because I didn’t leave in the wrong way."
“One thing my mother taught me when I was a kid growing up ‘you never leave home bad because you never know when you might need to come back through that door.’ I hope the coaches there and the team there still love for me and care for me the way they did when I was performing for them.”
“As fighters we have to make the decision who’s going to get us ready to take us to that next level. At the end of the day, all this hype about which coach is better than who, at the end of the day we’re the ones in there doing the job. We’re the ones that have to get in there and bust our butts. All they can do is give direction and make things go from there."
“It’s one of the best decisions I’ve made in a long time for myself.”
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