At 38 years of age, Quinton ‘Rampage’ Jackson’s best days of fighting are behind him. Considering he was one of the best fighters in the world for nearly a decade back in the 2000s, there’s nothing to be ashamed of about that. But for the past while he’s been taking one fight per year and not exactly setting the world on fire in those performances. That’s led a lot of people to question whether he’s still interested in fighting or just the paychecks a legend like him can still cash just going through the motions.
Rampage’s latest fight is a rematch in Bellator against ‘King’ Mo Lawal on March 31st, and he’s addressing those accusations with his typical candor, the same candor that led him to admit he doesn’t like training and wishes he’d never become a cagefighter in the first place.
“People misunderstood me or they tried to censor me or took what I said out of context,” Jacksontold Yahoo! Sports. “I’ve always been honest with what I have said. I hate training and I love fighting.”
He reiterated his disdain for Lawal and others that ‘like hugging people on the ground’ and said his main concern has always been an exciting fight. In that way, he considers himself a precursor to the Conor McGregor era.
“That guy ain’t laying on top of no one. I was the first Conor. I was Conor Mc-[N-word]. He can talk and say what he wants and talk about money and say he’s in it for the money and nobody opens their mouth and says anything negative about what he is saying. I’ve been doing the same stuff, but everybody’s trying to shut me up. And then there are people who take me out of context and say, ‘Oh, he’s just in it for the money. He don’t love this no more.’ You know what? What I do is try to entertain people. It’s all I’ve ever tried to do. I’m an entertainer and I’m always going to try to entertain people.”
Unfortunately for Rampage and his fans, it’s hard to entertain in a real fight when you’re not training as hard as your opponents. Most power strikers in mixed martial arts solved the oh so problematic ‘hugging wrestler problem’ by upping their own wrestling game so they could shuck off takedowns. But somewhere around 2010, Jackson stopped putting in that work. In 2015, he has decided he doesn’t want to cut weight so his light heavyweight fight with King Mo will be contested at heavyweight.
No one would be saying boo about any of this if Quinton was still power-bombing people in the cage and knocking guys out left and right. But his recent performances have featured a tentative Rampage afraid to engage and risk getting taken down … and that’s probably what this rematch against Mo Lawal will look like. Because as funny as it is to hear Rampage complain about opponents impregnating his leg, that doesn’t stop them from exploiting that hole in his game on fight night.
