Sherdog’s Top 10: Training Camps

Georges St. Pierre helped put the Tristar Gym on the map. | Photo: D. Mandel/Sherdog.com

5. Tristar Gym

In terms of pure coaching acumen, Tristar Gym’s Firas Zahabi might be the sharpest trainer in MMA, with a sterling ability to teach technique and develop the game plans and regimens that have led to his fighters attaining success at the very highest levels of the sport. Georges St. Pierre, Rory MacDonald and Kenny Florian are only a few of the fighters to benefit from Zahabi’s coaching over the years, and there is no reason to think that will stop anytime soon.

Zahabi is a true native of MMA, with a background in muay Thai, wrestling and Brazilian jiu-jitsu and a true gift for mashing them all together into a whole worth more than the sum of its parts. Nobody in the sport does a better job of teaching transitions and phase shifting: The reactive double-leg takedown, a counter to an opponent’s forward movement, is a Tristar specialty and as close to a signature move as the gym possesses. Mostly, Zahabi’s fighters are chameleons. He molds their techniques and approach to the specific opponent and circumstances and makes the idea of no style, no particular preferences or tendencies, the overarching goal of his instruction.

With St. Pierre perhaps out for good, MacDonald is the face of Tristar, but a new generation of young fighters is coming right along behind him. Recent UFC debutante Joseph Duffy, the last man to defeat Conor McGregor, is making waves; Alex Garcia remains a tremendously talented youngster who looked like the next big thing at welterweight prior to blowing out his knee in August; and Olivier Aubin-Mercier and Chad Laprise are exceptionally promising, as well. With Zahabi in charge at Tristar, they are in skilled hands.

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