Rampage Jackson Clarifies Statement About Regretting MMA
Former UFC light heavyweight champion Quinton “Rampage” Jackson will return to action in the main event of tomorrow night’s (March 31, 2017) Bellator 175 when he squares off with rival Muhammad “King Mo” Lawal in a rematch of their 2014 bout.
Jackson made headlines recently when he said that his biggest regret in mixed martial arts was starting the sport in the first place, but he has since clarified that statement, simply saying that leaving everything in his home of Memphis, Tennessee was a difficult decision to make:
“Man, half the time when you do interviews, you get negative people in the world who want to spin words and get clickbait, or just get people to listen to their interviews,” Jackson said (via MMA Fighting). “It’s hard being in the public eye when you just keep it real. The guy asked me, on the spot, what was my biggest regret about doing MMA, and I thought about my family.
“I left everything back in Memphis and I moved to California. I left everything. My family, my car, my job, everything, and I left and moved to California by myself.”
While he said that his statement was indeed taken out of context, he also detailed some of the darker parts of being a fighter, which likely led him to say what he said regarding his regrets:
“Since I’ve been a fighter, I’ve been screwed out of millions of dollars by managers and people pretending to be friends. When I was champion, I had a lot of fake friends around me,” Jackson said. “And as soon as I lost the belt, where did they go? My family, they’re always there. They always tell me they miss me and they’re proud of me. So I just wish I would’ve stayed home in Memphis and been with my family, the people who like me.”
“I would’ve been a construction worker, just like the rest of my family, and happy. And that’s all I said. But you’ve got negative people that spin it and take it out of context, and it gets annoying sometimes when people do that. So, I just kept it real, like I always do. I keep it real. You ask me a question, I’m going to give you the honest, most real answer I can possibly give you.”
What do you make of Jackson’s comments?
