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Dana White: I thought Rampage Jackson looked good at UFC 114
By Zach Arnold | May 30, 2010
Some quotes from an in-depth interview with Dana White on MMAFighting.com where he talked about the whole card in general.
I’m only quoting the beginning portion relating to the UFC 114 main event.
Are you surprised by the outcome of the fight?
“No. I… you know, I don’t think anybody’s shocked that this was Rashad’s game plan. It was the right game plan, you know, I thought he was going to use his speed, agility, and athleticism to you know move in, get in some quick shots, move out. I thought he was going to try to stay away, get the takedowns, whatever he could, and I thought that Rampage was going to come forward, you know, throwing leather and hoping to catch him and knock him out.”
Rampage Jackson said that he didn’t feel like himself out there. What did you think of his performance?
“I thought he looked good, you know, I thought he looked good. I didn’t think he looked, everybody was talking about how tired he was, I didn’t think he looked that exhausted. When he did catch Rashad in that third round he went after it and got him. Rashad just, you know, Rashad got out, man. Rashad looked strong tonight, he looked agile, he looked explosive, he was ready. I mean, all you had to do is watch the Countdown show and see the training that he was going through and you knew Rashad was going to be ready for this fight.”
- Kevin Iole: Rampage/Evans fails to live up to billing and would have been an acceptable mid-card match performance
- Gareth A. Davies (London Telegraph): Rashad showed perfect game plan, but the fight was a let down
Did the UFC 114 main event live up to the hype?
“Yeah, I think the fight… You know, obviously it was a huge hyped-up fight and I think that the fight went exactly the way I thought it was going to go. People were asking me who I thought was going to win, I said I have no idea but I bet this is the way it’s going to go and I explained it pretty much the way it happened.”
There seemed to be a very different feeling, a different buzz about this fight than other fights.
“No doubt about it. This was a huge weekend for MMA, you know. First of all, you know, I don’t think I’ve ever done more PR for a fight than I did this week. I’ve been working my ass off this week and you know with the launch of the video game, this huge fight this weekend, the Expo this weekend, there was just there was a lot of UFC going on this week and you know it translated. People were buzzing about it and people were into it.”
What’s next for Rampage? Is his heart still in fighting?
“Yeah. I think that this is what… listen, you know, there’s a lot of [expletive] on the Internet and people talk stuff. The grass is never greener on the other side and make no mistake about it, this is where Rampage makes his money. You know, this is where he makes a lot of money, so… I think he realizes, listen, it was a win-win for everybody. He made a great movie, something to be proud of and from what I hear, he killed it in this movie and did a great job, so you know and there’s no doubt that this movie’s going to be the big smash Summer hit. And he came in and got this fight, Rashad was the winner tonight, Rampage will jump back in line and start all over again.”
Topics: Media, MMA, UFC, Zach Arnold | 18 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
Hopefully last night’s results will give pause to all those who gave totally unfounded high rankings to Lil Nog and L.A. Cane. Cane’s biggest career win is over Sokoudjou (who beat Lil Nog), and Nog’s biggest win in over three years is against Cane. These guys belong on the outskirts of the LHW Top 25 – along with Mousasi, another fighter whose two biggest win at 205 are over the very same Sokoudjou and another man whose only significant win in recent years is also over Sokoudjou – Babalu. Then there’s King Mo, who belongs one rung above Mousasi.
And with that, here is the May 2010 edition of klown’s LHW, based purely on wins over ranked opponents.
1. Rua
2. Machida
3. Evans
4. A. Silva
5. Griffin
6. Jackson
7. Henderson
8. Liddell
9. Franklin
10. W.Silva
11. T.Silva
12. Bader
13. Jardine
14. Ortiz
15. Jones
16. Couture
17. Coleman
18. Soszynski
19. Bonnar
20. Irvin
21. Shafer
22. Alexander
23. Nogueira
24. Lawal
25. Mousasi
26. Sobral
27. Diabate
28. Cane
29. Sokoudjou
Dude, I know you have some sort of ranking system that results in these ranking, but Alexander, Schaefer and Irvin are above Lil Nog? He did ultimately win the fight last night.
Styles…it’s all about styles.
Who has Nogueira beaten really?
The guy has no takedown defense against a guy who was completely gassed and had the ungliest looking single leg takedowns.
I think any of the better wrestlers with a full training camp would have made him look silly during that fight. Imagine if Jon Jones, Ryan Bader, Randy Couture, or King Mo fought him last night? He would have lost all 3 rounds.
True enough. I guess that’s where the subjectiveness creeps in and I’m just making assumptions based on my own predictions…which is what klown’s rankings clearly avoid.
I think Nogueira stylistically matches up with some guys alot better than others…I have said time and time again that wrestling is his huge weakness, so he probably does lose to those guys. On the flip side I see him taking out someone like Liddell, Thiago, K-Sos, Bonner or Griffin who are also way up the charts.
As I said, it’s all about styles.
The chain from Jones (#15) to Alexander (#22) originates with Houston’s upset knockout of Keith Jardine three years ago. I agree that it’s a bit odd when viewed from the other common ranking philosophy, which is to speculate about who would win a hypothetical match-up, but according to the actual record, this is what the ranking looks like.
The guys from Nogueira on down simply haven’t beaten any of the Top 22 guys, and until they do, they don’t deserve to be ranked any higher.
Well to get technical, Nogueira holds a win over #7. fighter on the list. Though the “relevance” is pretty stale-dated.
What’s so bad about beating Sokoudjou? He was a high-ranked light-heavyweight at one time, and he deserved it, too. Sokoudjou is a better recent LHW win than anybody you’ve got ranked between 14 and 22 has.
As far as I can see, your whole system is based on the idea that when (to use an example) Forrest Griffin beat Rua and Rampage, this retroactively inflated the value of having beaten him beforehand. So where Jardine’s win over Griffin was, at the time, just a win over a popular reality show winner and prospect, it suddenly counts as a win over an elite guy. This in turn elevates Houston Alexander, which elevates James Irvin…
I just can’t agree with that.
JRN,
I started compiling these a couple of years ago using MMA Weekly’s rankings as a starting point. Since then, all I do is insert a winner in the place of the ranked fighter he defeated, and push everybody else down by 1. There’s no retroactive elevation of fighters due to former opponents rising thru the ranks.
All the guys from Jones to Shafer beat Alexander (or beat someone who beat Alexander) after Alexander took out Jardine, not before. Jardine’s relatively high ranking comes from beating Liddell, and Griffin’s comes from beating Rua and Rampage.
There’s nothing wrong with beating Sokoudjou – I think he was in my Top 10 at some point. But since then, a lot of people have beaten him, or have beaten fighters who had beaten him in the past, or have entered the rankings above him by taking out someone who was higher ranked than him.
As far as I can tell, the only difference between my system and yours is that I don’t drop fighters for losses – I only promote fighters for wins.
Thing is, Jardine beat Liddell after losing to Alexander, not before. So you’d have to be retroactively elevating Alexander to make it work.
Correct, that’s why Jardine jumped from underneath Alexander to a top 10 spot (formerly Liddell’s). Then he got beaten, and surpassed, by Wanderlei, Thiago, and Bader. (That’s how those three fighters earned their own spots on the chart.) Jardine also lost to Jackson within that period but Rampage was already ranked above him.
“I started compiling these a couple of years ago using MMA Weekly’s rankings as a starting point. Since then, all I do is insert a winner in the place of the ranked fighter he defeated, and push everybody else down by 1.”
I just don’t get this desire to avoid any kind of thought when making the rankings. Obviously this kind of system is far worse than any subjective system, and there are more sophisticated objective systems out there, too.
None of this explains how Sokoudjou ended up below Houston Alexander. Sokoudjou beat two top-ranked light-heavyweights once upon a time, whereas Alexander has zero elite wins in his career.
Helwani covered the fan expo for the UFC on Friday, then he put his “objective reporter” hat on Saturday and covered the show for AOL. Gotta love the MMA media.
Hey, he changed hats!
Kudos to Kevin Iole for telling the truth about that garbage main event.
Terrible fight from both guys in my opinion. It was boring and looked really silly after all the trash they talked.
A couple of colleagues who used to buy all the UFC shows but stopped a year or so ago got this one. One of them texted me today that the show was terrible.
I didn’t see it. I can’t say. But it’s sort of interesting to me that they were brought back into the fold. Very anecdotal, of course, but there might be a monster number from this show.
Seems to me alot of mma writers got worked, you’d think that people who are so called experts would know better. The Main Event went just about what anyone who wasn’t in denial over Rampage Jackson’s status thought it would go. Rashad was faster, has better wrestling and trains with an elite camp Jackson had a long layoff and is very one dimensional nowadays. If you saw another outcome other than that then yeah I guess you’re disapointed but anyone who looked at the facts wasn’t and got what they paid for.
Agreed. It was pretty much exactly what I thought it would be. Except I thought Rampage would be gassed by the third round and Rashad would KO him coming in quick from the outside.