With his main event fight against Matt Hamill at UFC 130 drawing near, Quinton “Rampage” Jackson answered several questions regarding his preparations for his upcoming bout and other topics.
Prior to signing on to fight at UFC 130, Jackson had been offered a title shot against former UFC light heavyweight champion Mauricio “Shogun” Rua. However, Jackson turned down the opportunity and faced a lot of criticism from judgmental MMA fans.
“I’m a fighter and I’ve been fighting for a long time. I have common sense,” Jackson said. “I knew Shogun was going to have ring rust after taking a long time off after injury. There’s no way I could’ve took the fight on like four or five weeks notice. It’s no secret that I put on weight in between fights. I wouldn’t have even been able to make weight, so it would’ve been stupid for me to even try to do that.”
In his most recent fight, Jackson won in a controversial split decision against Lyoto Machida. Initially, Jackson seemed surprised by the decision, but “Rampage” expressed a different opinion on the UFC 130 conference call.
“I’m always surprised when judges give me a decision,” he said. “That’s one reason for the reaction with me being really silly, but I watched the fight. I think I did just enough to win.”
During his training camp for Hamill, Jackson has been without nutritionist Mike Dolce, who has provided a lot of help with Jackson’s weight management in the past. Despite the absence of Dolce, Jackson appears comfortable with his weight and condition.
“I’m actually doing great. I’m lighter at this point for my fight than I’ve been in a long time. I’ve been lifting a lot of weight with Lance Gibson and Julia Budd and I’m actually stronger than I’ve been for awhile. I’m a fighter. I train for the fights. The training part is the toughest part. It doesn’t matter who’s in my camp or not; I still got a job to do.”
Although Jackson claims to be in his best shape in quite some time, his motivation has been questioned constantly. Jackson has taken some heat for saying that he is not at all interested in the matchup with Hamill.
“Some MMA fans, they don’t hear something they want to hear and they jump all over you,” Jackson said. “If they really get to know me, I’m not really excited about anybody I fight. It’s my job; it’s my career. I don’t get excited anymore. I got almost 40 fights. I don’t get excited about anybody I fight.”
Another reason Jackson’s desire has been questioned is his constantly looming acting career. Despite briefly saying he was retiring to pursue acting in 2009, Jackson says that he is now primarily focused on fighting.
“I keep putting movies off to fight because fighting is my primary career. The movies are something I want to get into after I fight, but at the same time you got to stay out there if you want to stay in movies.”
Finally, Jackson pointed toward comments Hamill had made that have motivated him to train harder.
“My main motivation is to win, but I think Matt [Hamill] made a mistake when he said he was going to break my will and that I’m going to overlook him. That actually lit a fire under my ass and actually made me train a little bit harder just so I could break his will.”
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Sean Smith is a featured columnist for Bleacher Report MMA. For the latest insight and updates on everything MMA, you can follow Sean on Twitter @seansmithMMA.
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