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By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief
"I talked to Dana [White] on the phone the other day; I think we all grew up. I had some problems with some things that I felt I wasn't receiving and things like that. Lorenzo [Fertitta] and I talked about it. This time if I feel like I should receive some stuff that I'm not getting, I'll talk to them about it first and see if we can fix things. There's a lot worse shows out there than the UFC. People think MMA fighters have been treated bad, but there's people out there who don't care about us one bit. In other places, I don't see you earning no living like you do in the UFC. I thought there was something better out there, but I had to try something. I'm a fighter. I fight every day. I was born this way and I fight everything. Not only the physical fight, but I'm the worse person to argue with, I'm the worst person to – I fight every day.
... I was honest with everyone when I said I was upset with the UFC; I didn't like the way they treated me. I wasn't respected for what I bring to the table. I'm the guy who always comes to fight and I put on a show. I felt like Joe Silva kept giving me s***ty fights. …Why not give me 'Shogun' in Japan when I went to Japan? Why not make those matches? Why keep giving me people like [Ryan] Bader who only want to wrestle? It's unfortunate what happened in the past, so I left and said I could do better.
I'm not looking for guys to stand and trade with me; that would be a perfect world, but I'm just tired of fighting guys who are cowards who are just going to take you down and lay on you. I'm a wrestler so I'm not mad people want to take me down. Jon Jones, he did a good job of taking me down, did ground and pound then went for a submission. That's perfect. But like the fight I had with Rashad Evans, he just took me down and lay on top of me. That's annoying and that's where the fans lose. Fans don't pay money to see that type of stuff. But Maldonado, he's a standup fighter, and on paper, this is going to be a good show for the fans."
-Rampage Jackson talks to MMAJunkie.com about leaving the UFC in the first place and his thoughts on the organization now that he's returned.
Penick's Analysis: Jackson had a very different idea of how things should have been booked in his last run, but it didn't mesh with still being amongst the top ten fighters in the division. That's why he got fights like Bader and Glover Teixeira. Obviously his goal as a fighter is not to be the Champion again, and it's simply to be in slug fests rather than full-on legitimate MMA contests. He wants it to be a full striking affair, and he wants guys like Fabio Maldonado who are going to come in with that gentleman's agreement. That's fine enough, I suppose, but it's also not what the UFC typically presents itself to be. That disparity in philosophies had him unhappy, but that's on him and not the UFC.
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Jamie Penick, editor-in-chief
(mmatorcheditor@gmail.com)
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