Friend of our site


MMA Headlines


UFC HP


Bleacher Report


MMA Fighting


MMA Torch


MMA Weekly


Sherdog (News)


Sherdog (Articles)


Liver Kick


MMA Junkie


MMA Mania


MMA Ratings


Rating Fights


Yahoo MMA Blog


MMA Betting


Search this site



Latest Articles


News Corner


MMA Rising


Audio Corner


Oddscast


Sherdog Radio


Video Corner


Fight Hub


Special thanks to...

Link Rolodex

Site Index


To access our list of posting topics and archives, click here.

Friend of our site


Buy and sell MMA photos at MMA Prints

Site feedback


Fox Sports: "Zach Arnold's Fight Opinion site is one of the best spots on the Web for thought-provoking MMA pieces."

« | Home | »

Rampage suddenly says the magic of T isn’t helping his knees

By Zach Arnold | March 16, 2012

Print Friendly and PDF

This is why you read our site and folks like Smoogy who could see what was coming a mile away.

To recap the festivities this week:

  1. Rampage Jackson is claiming that using testosterone is going to add 10 more years to his fighting career. He has been pushing testosterone as his miracle elixir for his damaged knees, claiming that modifying his T levels from 420 ng to 600 ng (he wanted to go to 800 ng) has now ‘re-healed’ his knees.
  2. Rampage continued to claim on Twitter that he wanted to fight Mauricio Shogun. This is a fight that he wanted to have on the UFC Japan card but instead got to face Ryan Bader.
  3. UFC & Dana White went on their ‘UFC Tonight’ program on Fuel TV and claimed that Rampage’s last UFC fight will be ‘in the Summer’ against Mauricio Shogun. As Smoogy noted, this was designed for the sheep MMA media to run with the headline unchallenged — and it worked beautifully. Even ESPN ran the headline on their news ticker. Of course, all it was in reality was UFC boxing Rampage into a corner by announcing that he would fight Shogun. So, basically, they announced the scenario that they wanted for Rampage in terms of when his last fight is going to be and who it’s going to be against.
  4. When this announcement happened, I predicted on the site that UFC would consider a way to book Rampage/Shogun in Brazil on the same card as Anderson Silva/Chael Sonnen and that they could play the testosterone card against him by not allowing him to fight on a UFC ‘regulated’ event while using testosterone.

Which leads us to what happened on Thursday. UFC knows that when it comes to their PR & business battle with Rampage that they are dealing with a mental midget. Compare how Rampage handles his business to, say, Nick Diaz’s camp. Yes, I just said compare Rampage to Nick Diaz. Nick looks like a genius compared to Rampage (and for good reason).

Without having PR reps or lawyers doing his bidding, Rampage is fighting the Zuffa machine by himself and is performing as disastrously as you would expect him to. On Tuesday, Rampage made these claims:

Now, let’s flashback to a rant he did on Monday:

So, Rampage wants you to feel sympathy that he missed weight. But we know why he missed weight. He was using testosterone, as he admitted, and suffered from water retention.

Having a full day to absorb UFC’s announcement on Fuel TV, Rampage attempted to put a stop to the talk about him fighting Shogun:

You mean to tell me all that testosterone boosting suddenly isn’t matching up with what the MRIs told him? Or…

The idiot can’t keep a story straight. He tried to claim that things were ‘made up’ during that Fighters Only interview, only to not refute any of the seven major points raised during said interview. He claims that his knees have been ‘re-healed’ thanks to testosterone usage and that he’ll fight for 10 more years… but then claims he got an MRI… and says that he needs surgery on both knees… only to come back half a day later to say that he wants to fight on his own terms.

Newsflash: UFC will simply ice you out on your contract and you won’t make any cash. You better hope that rapping career takes off really well. Don’t worry, your buddy Michelle Beadle on her 0.15 QH-rated SportsNation show put over your Japanese rap performance today — while Skip Bayless trashed your rapping as lame and said your rapping career will be going nowhere.

I did laugh that ESPN credited the video to “ShuHirata1968.” Yes, that Shu Hirata.

The face of T usage in MMA speaks up

Chael Sonnen did his usual troll job, this time attacking Josh Gross and Rampage on Spike TV’s MMA show last night. Of course, what he doesn’t say every time he’s defending his testosterone usage is that the doctor he brought to the California hearings was Dr. Mark Czarnecki, a general practitioner and not (to my knowledge) a board-certified endocrinologist.

Every time one of UFC’s top fighters brings up the T issue, it’s terrible publicity for them and for the sport. How can people inside the business think that the public will buy what they are selling on this topic with a straight face?

Oh yeah, Chael, here’s a reminder from Dr. David Black: ‘testosterone is the base chemical of steroids.’

Topics: Media, MMA, UFC, Zach Arnold | 4 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |

4 Responses to “Rampage suddenly says the magic of T isn’t helping his knees”

  1. RST says:

    TRT shmucks are cheating!

    Nuff said!

    shmanderson shmilva has never asked for comp.

    (Well other then below his weight class!)

    Nuff said!

  2. fd says:

    “Every time one of UFC’s top fighters brings up the T issue, it’s terrible publicity for them and for the sport. How can people inside the business think that the public will buy what they are selling on this topic with a straight face?”

    Mostly because, outside the relatively small world of mma bloggers, journalists, and insiders, the public has.

  3. […] Rampage suddenly says the magic of T isn’t helping his knees | Fight Opinion […]

  4. Jason Harris says:

    Gotta love Rampage ducking out on what would obviously be a difficult fight for him. How’s anyone supposed to believe his crap when one day it’s “The MRI was all good, I’m ready!” to “my knees are blown out”

    It’s embarrassing how pathetic he’s become.

Comments

*
To prove you're a person (not a spam script), type the security word shown in the picture.
Anti-spam image