Quinton Jackson had hardly regained his breath from the rear naked choke with which Jon Jones defeated him at UFC 135 before he was back up and challenging Mauricio Rua to a rematch in Japan.
Shameless as the plug was, coming as it did so soon after the first tapout of his career, you can hardly blame Rampage for seizing the opportunity to advertise another showdown with Shogun. Why not, so long as the attendant crowd at the Pepsi Center in Denver and the folks at home watching Pay-Per-View were still paying attention?
He’ll be hard-pressed to captivate any sort of audience after being put down so soundly by the younger, stronger and more skilled Bones.
If we learned anything about Jackson on Saturday, it’s that he’s either a far cry from the superstar fighter he once was or the sport has simply passed him by.
Or both.
Whatever the case may be, it’s clear that Jackson, now 33, has a long way to go before he can climb his way back to the top of the Light Heavyweight division, much less the entire UFC. The brute strength and incredible resilience that once made Jackson one of the most feared and revered mixed martial artists in the world are no longer enough.
Not in this new age of cyborg fighters like Jones and Anderson Silva, who have the skill to excel in every facet of fighting and all the physical ability to do so to devastating effect.
Shogun learned that very same lesson at UFC 128 in March, when he surrendered the UFC Light Heavyweight Championship to Jones by way of a TKO.
So now Shogun and Rampage will head to Japan sometime in 2012, not so much to fight as commiserate in the Octagon and attempt to rekindle the faint flames of their respective careers, in the country where they last met.
That was 2005, when both were up-and-coming stars in Pride and a full two years before the UFC acquired the fledgling fighting league.
Now, it’s Jackson, along with Rua, who’s fighting for survival, fighting to remain relevant in a sport where marquee names like his are being swallowed alive by the true Ultimate Fighters of Tomorrow, today.
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