Amadi's Take
AMADI: Rampage Jackson may have been ineffective against Rashad Evans in UFC 114 loss regardless of "ring rust"
Jun 1, 2010 - 3:35:07 PM AMADI: Rampage Jackson may have been ineffective against Rashad Evans in UFC 114 loss regardless of "ring rust"

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By: Jason Amadi, MMATorch Columnist

Off time for any professional athlete invariably results in at least one lackluster performance. It’s almost impossible for athletes to replicate past stellar performances after taking lengthy sabbaticals from competition. However it is almost always unclear which athletes were negatively affected by their time off and by how much.

Fighting is obviously even more hampered by inactivity due to fighters having a heavy reliance on instincts, reflexes, and overall perfect timing. After Quinton Jackson’s loss to Rashad Evans last Saturday night at UFC 114, “ring rust” is the talk of the MMA world; however Jackson’s performance against Rashad Evans may not have been the example that some think it is.

Quinton “Rampage” Jackson is actually no stranger to layoffs during his UFC tenure. After his first title defense against Dan Henderson, Jackson took time off to be a coach on the Ultimate Fighter opposite Forrest Griffin before their title fight in July 2008, and actually cited that layoff as part of the reason for his performance in the controversial loss to Griffin.

After that fight legal troubles haunted Jackson before he was able to get in the cage once again in December of that year, where he starched Wanderlei Silva in the first round of their trilogy fight. Jackson remained active, even with a jaw injury, and was able to defeat Keith Jardine at UFC 96 before reprising his role as a coach on the Ultimate Fighter reality series, this time opposite Rashad Evans. This time, though, the December showdown that usually follows the Ultimate Fighter finale didn’t take place, and Jackson extended his time away from active competition to transform himself into B.A. Baracus in “The A-Team” film.

His performances have always been spirited in the face of extended layoffs, but against Rashad Evans he was simply outmatched. From the very beginning of the fight Evans overwhelmed Jackson with a type of speed that Jackson never on his best day possessed; and while Jackson wasn’t truly damaged by Evans’ offense, he was outwrestled and soundly defeated by what proved, on that night, to be a superior fighter.

Time away from the cage usually comes under different circumstances and affects fighters in different ways. UFC Light Heavyweight Champion Mauricio “Shogun” Rua, for example, had two knee surgeries that kept him out of action for over a year; and in his first performance back against Mark Coleman, Shogun was a fighter hampered by poor cardio and as a result casted doubt about whether or not we’d ever see the Shogun of old again.

The type of layoff and subsequent performance Quinton Jackson had against Rashad Evans was more akin to the type that Randy Couture had in 2008, where Couture took a year off to deal with legal issues with the UFC but returned to a challenge in Brock Lesnar. It’s questionable that Couture ever had the skills to handle the size advantage and power of Brock Lesnar, regardless of the layoff. This is also true for Quinton Jackson, whose instinct and timing, obviously lacking to finish Evans in the third round, was nothing other than short flurries completely ineffective against Evans for the rest of the fight.

While “ring rust” is certainly real, it may be going a bit too far to entirely excuse losses because of time away from active competition. Was Quinton Jackson ever fast enough to catch Rashad Evans? Was Rampage’s takedown defense ever good enough to stifle Rashad Evans’ takedowns? And who among us really wants to see Randy Couture take on Brock Lesnar for a second time?

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