Quinton “Rampage” Jackson is, at the tail end of his fight career, a fairly bitter guy. That’s becoming clearer by the day.
Perhaps the comment that best illustrates his current level of bitterness toward the UFC, his primary employer, came in a recent interview with Middle Easy.
Honestly, I just wish I could be compensated a little bit more for the privacy that I gave up. People don’t understand that. I traded my privacy and my kids’ privacy for…the living that I’m making now.
Jackson’s rationale is that other pro athletes who are also public figures make a lot more than pro MMA fighters. True enough. But that’s not where the confusion sets in.
A fighter has a good deal of control over various aspects of his or her life that have a heavy bearing on how high or low that fighter’s profile goes. Things like interviews, and the nature of those interviews. Things like whether to star in movies. Things like keeping one’s nose clean while out in the public eye.
Those self-inflicted things, good or bad, all raised Jackson’s profile. The UFC had nothing to do with those things. Therefore, the logic of his statement simply doesn’t square.
Charismatic and funny, Rampage Jackson has always used his personality to win fans and attention, both inside and outside of fighting. Nothing wrong with that. To present a bill to the UFC for things they don’t control, though, would seem not to take those tendencies into account. It also fails to acknowledge the UFC for the platform it has provided him. Furthermore, if one might wish to get technical, one could point out that a lot of Jackson’s star power among fight fans traces back to his days in Japan’s Pride promotion, not the UFC.
With all of these things in mind, Jackson’s comment comes off like just another broadside against an employer with which this particular employee has grown increasingly disillusioned.
Perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not, Jackson has lost his last two UFC fights and recently pulled out of a UFC 153 tilt with Glover Teixeira, citing injuries. As a result, Jackson is teetering on the precipice of retirement and relative irrelevance.
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