Filed under: UFC
AUBURN HILLS, Mich. — This isn’t the type of fight that a guy named “Rampage” is supposed to win. Not a guy who’s a part-time fighter, part-time movie star. Lyoto Machida is too controlled, too dedicated, too accurate to beat wild fighters. He waits, he makes you commit, and then he picks you apart. And Quinton “Rampage” Jackson is known for being wild.
Adding to the expected trouble, the Hollywood side of Jackson virtually promised fans a show, saying he planned to revert to the action-packed Rampage of old from his PRIDE days in Japan. He painted himself into a corner by railing against boring fighters and walked out to the cage to the old PRIDE theme song to remind himself of his vow until the last possible second.
The wild Rampage came back at UFC 123, but it was a refined wildness, controlled and in control.
Jackson’s split-decision victory over Machida was not the crushing knockout he hoped for, and it couldn’t steal the spotlight back over BJ Penn’s 21-second knockout win, but in a sense it was something better: it was a performance long on maturity.