Quinton “Rampage” Jackson, dressed in a white tank top and blue jeans, walked pass me one early morn of last April at the waiting area of Manila’s international airport.
Except for one man beside me who quipped to his female companions, “Look, that’s the guy from the UFC!” Jackson was initially largely unnoticed by the sparse crowd made up mostly of women and senior citizens.
To seize this rare chance (what’s he doing here?!), I immediately unzipped my belt bag to look for pen and paper to approach Rampage for an autograph (asking him for a short interview also crossed my mind). Unfortunately, there was paper but no pen.
I thought of having a cellphone photo taken with him, but that would be a little more tedious (for me) than just having him scribble his signature and perhaps a short greeting on a piece of paper. That would have entailed asking a stranger to take our photo, and what if he was in a bad mood or some kind of snob? (I’m a pretty shy guy. Just saying.)
Soon, from a distance I saw him meet a pretty Filipina on the sidewalk of the airport’s driveway. Soon, fans were having their photos taken with him, as he smilingly obliged. (So, he’s no snob after all.)
Finally, I saw him leave and speed away inside an SUV with his hot companion. (Yup, I think that’s an SUV, but I’m not really good at cars and their brands. But I’m pretty sure it was quite big, dark, tinted and ran on wheels. Again, just saying.)
Now, as reported and quoted by BJPenn.com, Jackson is in the news again with his trash talk repartee with Chael Sonnen, with the former firing the first shot* with,
I think Chael should keep his word and leave the UFC because that’s what he said he was gonna do if he lost. And he lost horribly. Bad! Chael sucks. He should go somewhere where people like his interviews, the way he talks shit on everybody. I can’t stand that boy. F!@k Chael.
Next, according to Opposingviews.com, Sonnen, now regaining his bluster, responded as an analyst on UFC Tonight with,
Rampage has one fight left in the UFC and he isn’t fighting me… He should stick to making box office disasters, and driving the wrong way on the freeway ramped up on Mountain Dew. He’s not on my level.
This nasty disagreement got me thinking that at least they share some commonalities.
They have this common— amateur wrestling background. And, they also share the same fate of losing championship fights twice, via stoppages, to a Silva; Jackson’s to Wanderlei in PRIDE FC and Sonnen’s to pound-for-pound king Anderson in the UFC.
I’m now also more regretful over my lost opportunity of having Jackson’s autograph or photo, of missing out on a souvenir of one who actually became a UFC champion, and eventually stopped and KO’d his Silva.
*Yup, they’ve really been going at each other for years. Please see embedded video. New video of Sonnen dissing Jackson is under FOX copyright and can not be viewed nor posted here.
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