When a UFC fighter goes on SportsCenter two days before his fight, he's usually expected to try to sell the viewers on a fight that he guarantees is going to be a "brawl" or a "barn burner" or a "slugfest" or whatever other word you want to use to describe the kinds of fights that will make the casual MMA fan watching ESPN buy the pay-per-view.That's not what Rampage Jackson did on Thursday morning.
Instead, Jackson went on SportsCenter and described his fight with Lyoto Machida Saturday night at UFC 123 as one that could easily be boring.
"The thing that really concerns me is that it could be a disaster," Jackson said. "It could be a boring fight. I'm trying to make it more exciting because I like exciting fights. But his style is boring to me, and he's coming off a loss where he got knocked out for the first time, and a lot of times when people get knocked out for the first time they're gun shy."
Jackson has long described Machida's style as boring and said he didn't want to fight Machida because he wants to put on a show and he thinks Machida runs. (I think it's more that Rampage realizes Machida's style is a bad matchup for his own style.) But it's a little surprising that Jackson is talking about that as he tries to make a final pay-per-view sales push.
Jackson also talked about his last fight, a unanimous decision loss to Rashad Evans, saying he blamed his 15-month layoff while he was shooting The A-Team for not being ready to go.
"I learned not to take so much time off and try to compete at the highest level," Jackson said. "I'm not proud of that long layoff."
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