Melvin Guillard training with Rashad Evans and Blackzilians

“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.”

While Mike Winkeljohn, Guillard’s striking coach at Jackson’s MMA, was not necessarily pleased with the manner in which the 28-year-old was lured to Imperial Athletics, he supports his fighter’s journey as it relates to learning new skills.

“You always care about them wanting to wheel and deal their way into your fighter’s heart through offers or different things to make [him] work out with them,” Winkeljohn said. “I just told Melvin, ‘You know what, go learn some new stuff.’ I got no problem with it as long as he learns something, and he comes back and shows you what he learned — because we don’t know it all.”

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Owner/Editor of SevereMMA.com. Writer, Podcaster, Producer of 'Notorious: Conor McGregor' film, 'Conor McGregor: Notorious' TV series, 'Ten Thousand Hours', 'The Fighting Irish' and more documentary films.

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