Jackson No Longer Rampages Through Fights at LinesMaker

Jackson No Longer Rampages Through Fights

LAS VEGAS — Quin­ton “Ram­page” Jack­son stole the show at the post-fight news con­fer­ence fol­low­ing UFC 130 on Sat­ur­day at the MGM Grand Gar­den Arena. The for­mer Ulti­mate Fight­ing Cham­pi­onship light heavy­weight cham­pion ban­tered with reporters and kid­ded with UFC pres­i­dent Dana White fol­low­ing his one-sided vic­tory over Matt Hamill.

It was fun, but it would have been much more enjoy­able had he stolen the show with his per­for­mance in the cage.

A top col­le­giate wrestler, Hamill was unable to come close to tak­ing Jack­son down and when he couldn’t, seemed to have no idea what else to do. Jack­son, though, didn’t do much more and the result was that the crowd of 12,816 booed lustily at the end. As Jack­son walked to his locker room, he turned to a group of reporters and asked, “Was it that bad?”

It was, pro­vid­ing a dis­mal end­ing to a lack­lus­ter card. There were some excla­ma­tion points — knock­outs by Travis Browne and Brian Stann imme­di­ately leap to mind — but the card was far from one of the UFC’s best.

Jack­son said after the bout that he is afraid he frac­tured his left hand and plans to go to see a doc­tor on Tues­day. If he gets cleared med­ically, White said he’ll fight cham­pion Jon Jones next.

Jack­son had vowed a knock­out, but though he landed con­sis­tently, he never came close to putting Hamill away.

“I think I needed a ham­mer,” Jack­son said, jok­ing. “Man, that guy can take a punch. I hit him with every­thing but the toilet.”

Hamill’s best defense was stay­ing at a safe dis­tance. He tried to shoot, but never seemed to do so with great pas­sion or inten­sity and Jack­son eas­ily fended each off. He didn’t go down once.

“I was a lit­tle shocked by Rampage’s hips and his abil­ity to defend the take­down,” Hamill said. “I wanted to bait him in so that I could secure the dou­ble leg. He defended well and was strong just like we expected.”

But while Hamill was a dis­ap­point­ment, so too was Jack­son. He turned into more of a counter puncher and wasn’t able to put together multi-punch combinations.

He was reminded of the fact that he hasn’t scored a knock­out since stop­ping Wan­der­lei Silva at UFC 92 on Dec. 27, 2008, but said the rea­son is because fight­ers are spend­ing extra time work­ing to neu­tral­ize his power.

“I was OK with my per­for­mance, but I wanted to do a lit­tle bit more,” Jack­son said. “I knew that I could stay on my feet with Matt Hamill, but Matt had a great game plan and I saw it as soon as I got in there with him. By how far away he was stand­ing from me, I could tell he was set­ting me up to take me down. He had some great low leg kicks and that made me not do what I wanted to do.”

A lot of guys had that prob­lem on Sat­ur­day. In a heavy­weight fight, Frank Mir out­wres­tled Roy Nel­son and won a wide unan­i­mous deci­sion. Mir eas­ily took Nel­son down and con­trolled him on the ground in a fight that didn’t please White.

Nel­son, who has now lost two in a row, tried to joked about his inabil­ity to match Mir’s wrestling.

“I brought Dan Hardy in for my wrestling this week,” Nel­son joked, refer­ring to the UFC wel­ter­weight with noto­ri­ously poor wrestling. “You can see that Eng­lish wrestling is not as good as Amer­i­can wrestling.”

White, though, didn’t find much of it funny. The fight wasn’t a hit and that didn’t sit well with him. He was talk­ing about Mir-Nelson when he said “I’m not happy about the per­for­mance of either one of them,” but he also could eas­ily have been talk­ing about Jackson-Hamill, as well.

Had it been the opener on the card, it might not have got­ten so much neg­a­tive atten­tion, but a main event on a high-profile show with a title shot at stake for Jack­son made the stakes higher.

“When you’re the main or co-main event, you have to go out and per­form,” White said. “When you don’t, you’ll hear my opin­ion, and you’ll hear it from the fans and media, too.”

Jack­son said he thought he’d be ready to fight Jones for the belt later in the year. Jones won the title by defeat­ing Mauri­cio “Shogun” Rua at UFC 128 in March, a shot he got when Jack­son was unable to take it because he didn’t have enough time to shed the weight.

Jones has been bat­tling pub­licly with his for­mer friend, Rashad Evans, whom Jack­son has also feuded with often.

“Any­body who knows Rashad, they’re going to have a feud with him,” Jack­son said. “I don’t know Jones, and I have noth­ing against him, but he has my belt.”

Jones, though, prob­a­bly isn’t too con­cerned about los­ing it after watch­ing Jack­son per­form on Sat­ur­day. While Hamill was more respon­si­ble for the dull bout, Jack­son as the mar­quee fighter and big­ger name deserves more than his share of it.

He wasn’t in great con­di­tion and he didn’t seem like he had the killer instinct that helped make him one of the most pop­u­lar fight­ers in the world. A bout against the highly regarded Jones would clearly moti­vate him, but the time has come for Jack­son to show the Ram­page side of him more often.

“He’s one of the top two or three light heavy­weights in the world,” White said.

At one point, he was for sure. But he’s going to need to begin per­form­ing like it fairly soon. These lack­lus­ter per­for­mances, though, are becom­ing all too common.

Related Posts:

• Fans Jeer Jack­son After UFC 130 Win
• UFC 130 Main Event Results — Jack­son Roll; Ram­page Deci­sions Hamill
• Hamill Sees ‘Ram­page’ As Key to His Future
• UFC 130 Musings
• Change of Oppo­nents? I’m Ready

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