Quinton ‘Rampage’ Jackson Says The Legal Injunction Against Him Is ‘Just Jokes’

After a two year absence, Quinton ‘Rampage’ Jackson is set to return to the UFC at UFC 186 on April 25th. But not if his former promotion Bellator has anything to say about it. Yesterday, the Viacom-owned company sent out a press release saying Jackson had “completed only three fights of his exclusive six-fight contract with Bellator, is barred by contract from fighting for any promoter other than Bellator.”

Not soon after, Rampage responded via his press outlet of choice, Twitter:

Cue Rampage receiving a nice thick envelope on his doorstep today.

While Bellator’s injunction is unquestionably very real, I have my doubts that it will be very effective. Back in December when Rampage announced he was returning to the UFC, his manager shared a laundry list of unfulfilled contractual obligations including a Paramount movie deal, a reality TV show, and ‘a significant PPV model.’

“Over a period of four months we have been bouncing between Scott trying to make things happy, and Viacom legal failing to resolve the many impossible breaches promised by Rebney. The one decent part of the entertainment contract was a provision to terminate if breaches cannot be resolved. We were obliged to give a 45-day notice listing the breaches. At the end of the period the contract allows us to terminate in writing to Bellator/Viacom. During this process, Scott Coker attempted to resolve the issues but was unsuccessful. We actually gave Bellator/Viacom 70 days in total. At the end we terminated in writing and informed all parties that we would now be seeking promotional opportunities as a free agent.

“The UFC was spoken to and indicated an interest in doing business. They were very careful in reviewing our legal position. Our law firm, the UFC lawyers and an outside law firm all agreed that the termination was legitimate.”

This is where the rubber hits the road. While Rampage Jackson has never been known for being a super reasonable person to do business with, the UFC’s team of cut throat devil-spawn lawyers were birthed from the depths of hell specifically to evaluate situations like this. If they signed off on Rampage being in the clear, then you better believe they have a strong legal case for it.

There’s always a chance things could get screwy in court though, depending on how much firepower Viacom decides to put behind this fight. It’s important to note that while Bellator is owned by the multi-billion dollar media conglomerate, that doesn’t give them instant access to all Viacom resources. Hence why Rampage Jackson left Bellator in the first place: Viacom never actually bothered to come through on half the things promised in his contract.

But this wouldn’t be the first time Bellator has won a battle like this: they ultimately forced Eddie Alvarez out of a title fight at UFC 159, costing him a percentage of PPV money made off the highly successful Jones vs Sonnen card. That was a very different legal situation, though. Alvarez got f*cked over on the wording of a matching clause that allowed Bellator to offer him the same amount per PPV even though they could never match UFC PPV sales. UFC 159 would go on to sell over 500,000 pay per views. In the end, Bellator’s PPV event barely broke 100,000.

In this case, Rampage had a clear eject button clause built into his contract. It came with a nice long paper trail confirming every step along the way, and several groups of lawyers have gone over it with a fine tooth comb confirming Quinton was free and clear. Unless Bellator pulls something extremely sneaky (always a possibility considering the Alvarez situation), Rampage Jackson shouldn’t have an issue fighting for the UFC next month.

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