It didn't take Quinton Rampage Jackson long after his unanimous decision loss to Rashad Evans at UFC 114 to pull a Tito Ortiz. Just two and a half weeks after the bout and Rampage has already formulated his own "cracked skull" defense.
Speaking with Fighters Only this week, the A-Team star explained away his less than stellar performance in the bout.
“I apologize for the fight not so much because I lost but because of how it went down. I always like to put on exciting fights for the fans but Rashad came out to use that ‘Greg Jackson’ plan: be boring and squeak out a victory. So that bothers me more than the loss... I remember one other thing he was doing - he was punching me in my knee! It was weird because I had suffered a real bad knee injury in camp but we kept it secret, we didn’t say anything about it and we didn’t even tell the UFC. I told my doctor and that was it, he helped me out but I was going to back out of the fight. The only reason I didn’t back out was the fight had been so hyped and I didn’t want to disappoint the fans. Why was he punching me in the knee though? That’s kind of weird - did he find out about the injury? I don’t know. Its weird.”
He went on to say that he held back from finishing Rashad after rocking him with a punch in the bout because he was worried Evans would take him down and make the fight even more boring than it already was.
“The reason why [I didn't finish him when I had him stunned] is because I thought he wanted me to rush in so he could take me down again. That’s the worst time to rush in and take somebody out. So the whole time I was walking on eggshells and trying to keep him from taking me down because Rashad is an awesome wrestler and I was having trouble getting up off the floor. So I figured if I rushed in he was gonna take me down."
One movie under his belt and already Rampage is more concerned about the entertainment value of a project than finishing production.
How "Hollywood" of him.
-Cage Potato
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