Critics of the strategy that Carlos Condit used to win last week don't appreciate the finer points of fighting, his coach says.

"There's still a large contingent of people, that they just want to see these guys almost die, or the other guy almost die and come back, and sometimes fights are like that," says Greg Jackson, one of the best-known trainers of athletes in the Ultimate Fighting Championship. "But sometimes you get technical masterpieces too, and to hate a beautiful, technical fight -- you're not really a fight fan. You're just there to watch the car wrecks, you know what I mean?"

Jackson directed the corner of Condit on Saturday for the welterweight's victory Saturday against Nick Diaz at UFC 143 in Las Vegas. All three judges scored the fight for Condit, but Diaz's camp labels it a bad decision.

USA TODAY spoke to Jackson on Monday about Condit-Diaz and the potential dilemma of having his proteges fight each other later this year. Excerpts from the conversation:

Q: Critics of Saturday's decision seem to believe that many of Carlos' strikes, in their view, did negligible damage and thus should not be given any consideration. Why are they wrong?

Jackson: (laughs) I didn't even know that was an argument.

I guess they're wrong because they hurt a lot. If you need evidence of the proof of that, you can see Nick's output and his pace (were) much slower than he usually is, especially by that third round.

Leg kicks, the way Carlos was throwing them, hurt. Head kicks, the way he would kick him in the head, hurt. Punches and spinning elbows hurt.

UFC 143:  Condit comes full circle

If you don't believe Carlos hits hard, you can look at all the knockouts that he's done. Or you could come over and allow him to kick you in the leg and see how much of it you can take.

If it's actually an argument that Carlos doesn't hit hard, I would have to say that the record would clearly negate that, if that indeed is a legitimate argument.

I bring it up because Nick, in his post-fight interview, used the term "baby leg kicks" and seemed somewhat disdainful about their impact.

I'm sure that you're going to come up with a lot of stuff, but anybody that knows the business knows the difference between a little foot-slapper leg kick and the deep, hard leg kick that Carlos was landing, so much so that it almost crumbled him by the fifth round. Him taking all those leg kicks, he literally almost crumbled.

He's so tough he wouldn't go down. Nick Diaz is one of the toughest human beings on the planet. But the head kicks and the punches and the spinning elbows -- like when the sweat flies off you and stuff -- pretty sure it hurts.

You've talked about the need to slow down Nick's movement...

Absolutely.

Why was that so important?

Because Nick is so good at it.

Nick's thing is this. He moves forward very well and iIf he gets you where your back is to the cage, man, he starts opening up and just landing these beautiful combinations.

I love watching him work. He goes high and low and switches. Even his subtle head movements and stuff. He's very, very good when your back is to the cage.

It's just like in boxing too. Some boxers will kind of throw you up against the ropes and really start rocking and rolling on you. So when you're fighting a guy like that, you've got to get off of the ropes, so to speak, and then run back to the middle of the cage.

PHOTOS:  UFC 143 gallery

So that's what Carlos would do. Every time he would get there, we'd have him bail, exit out, get in the middle of the cage, and then get off first and start the process all over again.

Meanwhile, in that process, the FightMetric numbers clearly show that during that time, when Carlos would control where and when the engagement would happen, Carlos had the significant striking advantage there. So the game plan worked very well.

There seems to be a belief among folks who are, shall we say, proponents of Diaz, that the current rules of MMA and judging criteria allow for what they consider less interesting action. How much would you agree with that?

Well, not at all, because what do you want, then? I guess, what do you want?

Because there are sports for you, that if you just want two men to stand in front of you and (hit) each other and basically just punch each other in the face. Man, there's all these great Toughman competitions and there's a lot of lower level and stuff like that where you just toe the line. Just stand in front of you, you just one-two, and one guy goes down. If that's what you enjoy, then by all means, that's a sport; there's a legitimate sport for that....

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