Tag: matthamill

UFC 130 Weigh-in Results

Filed under: UFC, NewsLAS VEGAS – The near-lovefest that has become UFC 130 came to a partial stop Friday at the official event weigh-ins at the MGM Grand Garden Arena.

Main event fighters Quinton “Rampage” Jackson and Matt Hamill each weighed in at …

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LAS VEGAS – The near-lovefest that has become UFC 130 came to a partial stop Friday at the official event weigh-ins at the MGM Grand Garden Arena.

Main event fighters Quinton “Rampage” Jackson and Matt Hamill each weighed in at 205 pounds for their bout, then engaged in the afternoon’s most intense staredown. It was a stark contrast to Wednesday’s press conference, where the two shared a couple light moments on stage even before their staredown photo op.

When the fight was booked, Jackson was vocal about not having much interest in the fight. But after Hamill said he planned to break the former light heavyweight champion’s will, Jackson took a new level of motivation. And Wednesday’s cordiality went out the window Friday in favor of a forehead-to-forehead showcase, Hamill’s hands up and Jackson’s at his sides.

Hamill told emcee Joe Rogan that the fight against Jackson will be the most important fight of his career.

“This is the biggest opportunity for me to help my career,” Hamill said. “I know from Day One he didn’t want to fight me, but I promise you one thing – it’s going to be a good fight.”

Jackson, who doesn’t have a knockout win since his UFC 92 victory over Wanderlei Silva, promised fans he’s looking for a finish against Hamill, and that Hamill’s comments about breaking his will got him amped up.

“It motivated me to train extra hard,” Jackson said. “I was already training hard ’cause it’s been a while since I knocked anyone out. But I’m ready to put on a show for you guys and get a knockout.”

Co-main event heavyweights Frank Mir and Roy Nelson, though, continued to be almost playful about their fight. The two Las Vegas residents, who share many mutual friends and sometimes train together, each weighed in at 260 pounds, and fought back smiles as they squared off.


Making his return to the UFC after an absence of four and a half years, Jorge Santiago, who most recently was Sengoku’s middleweight champion, weighed in at 185 on the nose for his middleweight fight with military hero Brian Stann. Stann was 186 on a Memorial Day weekend card that he has said will be emotional for him as a veteran. That bout opens Saturday’s pay-per-view.

And despite trouble making weight in the past, Thiago Alves weighed in at 170 pounds for his welterweight bout against Rick Story, who was also 170 and brings a five-fight winning streak into the event.

UFC 130 airs live on pay-per-view at 9 p.m. Eastern on Saturday and is preceded by a pair of fights on Spike TV at 8 p.m. In addition, three preliminary card fights will air on Facebook at 6:20 p.m.

The official weigh-in results are below:

Main Card
Quinton Jackson (205) vs. Matt Hamill (205)
Frank Mir (260) vs. Roy Nelson (260)
Stefan Struve (255) vs. Travis Browne (247)
Thiago Alves (170) vs. Rick Story (170)
Brian Stann (186) vs. Jorge Santiago (185)
Spike TV Prelims
Miguel Torres (135.5) vs. Demetrious Johnson (135.5)
Kendall Grove (185) vs. Tim Boetsch (186)
Facebook Prelims
Gleison Tibau (155) vs. Rafaello Oliveira (155)
Michael McDonald (136) vs. Chris Cariaso (135)
Renan Barão (135) vs. Cole Escovedo (135)

 

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Rampage Jackson Gives Lesson on What Not to Say to People From Memphis

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Rampage JacksonLAS VEGAS — MMA Fighting spoke to Quinton “Rampage” Jackson on Wednesday about his UFC 130 fight against Matt Hamill, why it bothered him when Hamill said he would break his will and why didn’t sound like he wanted to be interviewed during his recent appearance on The MMA Hour.

Check out the video interview after the jump.

 

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Rampage JacksonLAS VEGAS — MMA Fighting spoke to Quinton “Rampage” Jackson on Wednesday about his UFC 130 fight against Matt Hamill, why it bothered him when Hamill said he would break his will and why didn’t sound like he wanted to be interviewed during his recent appearance on The MMA Hour.

Check out the video interview after the jump.

 

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‘Rampage’ Jackson’s Toughest Role? Convincing Us He Still Wants to Fight

Filed under: UFCLet’s say, for the sake of wild, purely speculative conversation, that Quinton “Rampage” Jackson could stay home this Saturday night.

Say he could press a magic button (years of TV and movies have taught me that this button would nece…

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Let’s say, for the sake of wild, purely speculative conversation, that Quinton “Rampage” Jackson could stay home this Saturday night.

Say he could press a magic button (years of TV and movies have taught me that this button would necessarily be big and red, and may or may not be covered by a glass case) and create a Rampage clone that would go and fight for him at UFC 130. Say Real Rampage would get the money and Clone Rampage would do all the work, make the decisions, and live with the pain of defeat or the satisfaction of victory, but to the rest of the world the two would be indistinguishable.

My question isn’t whether Jackson would choose to press the magic button under these circumstances. That’s too easy. Obviously he would press it. The way he talks about his fighting career these days, I don’t think you could keep him away from that button with a pack of wolves and a stun gun.

But say he pressed the button. Say he sent Clone Rampage out into the Las Vegas night to do his bidding against Matt Hamill. My question is: would Real Rampage, still lodged comfortably at home, bother to buy the pay-per-view so he could watch what happened? Or would he decide to do something else instead, maybe opting to find out the results via text message later that night?

This is the question I can’t answer, and it’s also why I don’t know what to make of the current state of Jackson’s MMA career.

To hear him tell it, fighting is just something to fill the time and earn a paycheck between movie roles. The minute he gets paid more to act than he does to fight, Jackson has said, he’s out of here. Nobody can fight forever, and he doesn’t particularly want to try.

Which is completely reasonable to most of us. If you can get paid more for sitting around on movie sets eating organic potato chips than you can for spending weeks living like a monk in training camp and waking up sore every morning, that’s not too tough a decision for most people.

Then again, there’s a reason most people don’t become pro fighters, and a complete lack of skill and athleticism is only part of it.

What it comes down to is a lack of enthusiasm. All fighters have to have it to begin with, because when you’re just starting out the money isn’t good enough to justify doing it for any other reason. Unless you’re Brock Lesnar. Or maybe Bobby Lashley.

But when Jackson made his pro debut in 1999 against a 175-pound Mike Pyle in Memphis, he did it for no more than a couple hundred bucks and a chance to punch someone in the face without legal repercussions.

I don’t know what mix of ambition and anger and competitive zeal was driving that Rampage, but it seems to have evaporated in the eleven-plus years since then. Now when he talks about upcoming fights he seems to be the person least interested in the conversation. Even when he deigns to dredge up some the charisma that made him a fan favorite – such as he did last night on ‘The Late, Late Show with Craig Ferguson‘ – he still seems far more enthusiastic about the after-party than the fight.

It makes you wonder, what exactly is Jackson trying to accomplish in MMA at this point? Is he only after the money? The fame? Is it nothing more than a way to keep him in the limelight just long enough to hold the interest movie producers? Or does he still want to etch a legacy for himself beyond what he’s already accomplished in the sport? Does he want to be champion? He’s still quite good at it, but does he actually want to participate in the physical act of fighting?

It’s hard to come up with a clear answer right now, and that’s a problem. This is the same Jackson who recently turned down a title shot because he thought six weeks wasn’t enough time to prepare. It’s also the one who waffles between mild interest and complete apathy when the subject of his next fight comes up.

Not only is he not fired up about fighting for a living, he rarely even pretends to be. I don’t know what that means for his immediate future in pro fighting, but it’s probably not the best sign for his acting career. If he can’t convince fans that he’s in the cage because he truly wants to be, how’s he ever going to convince movie audiences that he’s an entirely different person?

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Rampage Jackson Says Matt Hamill ‘Lit a Fire’ Under Him for UFC 130 Fight

Filed under: UFC, News If you take Quinton “Rampage” Jackson at his word, time is running short on his mixed martial arts career. The former UFC light-heavyweight champion reasserted on Thursday that he plans to call it quits at age 35, and he turns 33…

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If you take Quinton “Rampage” Jackson at his word, time is running short on his mixed martial arts career. The former UFC light-heavyweight champion reasserted on Thursday that he plans to call it quits at age 35, and he turns 33 next month. Until then, he still has a few big fights ahead of him. Up until recently, however, he didn’t view UFC 130‘s main event bout with Matt Hamill as one of them.

In recent interviews, Jackson made headlines when he said he wasn’t particularly excited to face Hamill. On a Thursday teleconference, Jackson said that wasn’t unusual for him, as he no longer gets excited about facing anyone. But, he also added that changed a bit when Hamill commented recently that he knew he was “going to break his will.”

“My main motivation is to win,” he said, “but I think Matt made a mistake when he said he’s going to break my will and I’m going to overlook him. That lit a fire up under my ass. That made me train a little bit harder so I can break his will, and make sure I can outclass him.”

Jackson admitted that was the just the pick-me-up he needed to spark him.

“Honestly in the beginning, fighting him, I wasn’t 100 percent motivated as I would be vs. someone who had beaten me before or something like that,” he said. “But when he said that, that motivated me as much as I’ve been motivated in a fight.”

Jackson (31-8) is coming off a split decision win over Lyoto Machida, and might find himself in the title picture with a win over Hamill, a possibility he said is “the last thing on my mind.”

For his part, Hamill (10-2) said his comments stemmed from his belief that Jackson would overlook him. Over the last several years, almost all of Jackson’s fights have come against top five fighters, a level he has yet to reach. Jackson said that in preparation, he’s worked overtime on his wrestling, acknowledging that he “really respects” his opponent’s prowess in that part of the game while shooting back, “I feel I’m a pretty decent MMA wrestler, too.”

Hamill and his manager Duff Holmes alluded to their potential game plan, with Holmes saying “He’s going to be out-wrestled and he’s going to be taken down. There’s just no way around it.” Later, when asked if he felt Jackson has concentrated on his boxing to the detriment of the rest of his MMA skills, Hamill said, “Yeah, that’s why I want him.”

A win over Jackson would be the biggest of Hamill’s career, and thrust him into the title picture with a six-fight win streak. With so much at stake it might be easy to look ahead, but Hamill is trying to focus on the job at hand.

“I’ve always tried to take it one fight at a time,” he said. “I feel like I’m in the semifinals of a wrestling bracket. And I’ve never lost in the semifinals of a wrestling bracket.”

With his time running short, Jackson too admitted there is some importance in going after the belt again, but also wanted to continue to leave fans with memories from a crowd-pleasing style, even if they didn’t necessarily understand why he might not be around much longer.

“If anybody’s smart, they want to have an exit plan from MMA or any full contact sport,” he said. “You can tell which fans are smart and which ones are kind of ignorant if they just think you’re going to fight and just be done. What happens after you get done fighting? Just run away? I don’t understand what they think. That stuff doesn’t bother me at all. It’s my life, it’s my family I take care of. I have my goals and my plans. Things I want to do to make me happy. That’s all I care about is me and my family. The fans? I’m just here to entertain them, but do I care about them the same way as I care about my family? Hell no.”

 

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Matt Hamill Plans to Break Will of Rampage Jackson at UFC 130

Filed under: UFCAt long last, Matt Hamill finally is getting what he has been asking for for a while – and the UFC won’t start him slowly.

Hamill (10-2, 9-2 UFC) has been asking for a Top 10 opponent, and UFC president Dana White said after his last …

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Matt HamillAt long last, Matt Hamill finally is getting what he has been asking for for a while – and the UFC won’t start him slowly.

Hamill (10-2, 9-2 UFC) has been asking for a Top 10 opponent, and UFC president Dana White said after his last win that he’d get one. After a series of changes, Hamill gets arguably the most important fight of his career at UFC 130 against former light heavyweight champion Quinton “Rampage” Jackson.

And thanks to five straight wins, Hamill, the only deaf fighter in the UFC, is riding high on confidence going into the May 28 fight.

“I know I’m going to break his will – I know I’m going to beat Rampage,” Hamill told host Ariel Helwani on a recent edition of “The MMA Hour.” “I’ve been training real hard and my conditioning and my skills and technique, striking and kicking are a lot better.”

Mark Munoz Utilizes Newfound Love of Standup Game to Beat CB Dollaway

Filed under: UFCLOUISVILLE, Ky. – Mark Munoz has never been shy about saying his standup is far from the best part of his MMA game – odd for a guy who had finished nearly half his fights courtesy of his hands.

Maybe he’ll start giving them a little m…

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Mark MunozLOUISVILLE, Ky. – Mark Munoz has never been shy about saying his standup is far from the best part of his MMA game – odd for a guy who had finished nearly half his fights courtesy of his hands.

Maybe he’ll start giving them a little more credit now. Thursday night in the co-main event of the UFC on Versus 3 card, Munoz needed just 54 seconds – and three big bombs – to shut down CB Dollaway.

“I’ve been working just strictly on my hands and on my standup,” Munoz said after the fight. “I’ve been working with my coaches, Abel Nunez and Rafael Cordeiro – I know I have power in my hands and if I touch you, you feel it.”