Former UFC light heavyweight champion Quinton "Rampage" Jackson has no interest in being inducted into the UFC Hall of Fame.
Jackson spoke with MMA journalist Ariel Helwani on the latest edition of The MMA Hour and said the following about how he would reject any sort of invite from the UFC to be enshrined in the promotion's Hall of Fame. He opened up about his past relationship with the company and how he believes they sabotaged multiple career opportunities for him in and outside of the cage.
“No, f*ck them,” said Jackson (h/t MMA Fighting). “I don’t fight for no Hall of Fame. What do you get for being in the Hall of Fame? I don’t know if I say this, I’ll get sued by the UFC, but all I can say is, after I did the A-Team, some organizations made it really hard for me to do other movies. That’s all I can put out there. I can say I signed with one of the biggest agencies in Hollywood, and they didn’t do sh*t for me, and I felt like it was on purpose. Actually, I know it was on purpose because now they own UFC. That’s why [after] the A-Team, you didn’t see me in nothing else big. A lot of things left a bad taste in my mouth. I’m walking up to UFC, and I’m getting ready to fight, and I got a big Reebok contract, and then the UFC’s like, ‘Oh, we don’t know Reebok. You can’t have Reebok.’ Then, next thing you know, the UFC’s got a big Reebok contract. Then I’m like, man, what the f*ck? Now, where’s Reebok and the UFC, where’s that relationship at now? Both of them, f*cking shady on that deal. That left a bad taste in my mouth, and that’s why I left the UFC, and then the UFC told everybody that I retired, so everybody thought I was retired. I went to Bellator, and most of the fans that didn’t decide to follow me on social media actually thought I retired. When I went somewhere, people would come up to me and say, ‘Man, I wish you hadn’t retired.’ I’m like, ‘Man, I just fought a couple of months ago!’...They had no idea. Most of the fans that mainly watch the UFC thought I retired, because that’s the narrative that they pushed, and they knew that I wasn’t going to fight for them as long as they had that Reebok contract because I was salty about that. If Dana would have gave me f*cking some money and been like, ‘Hey Rampage, I’m sorry about this Reebok deal, here’s a check,’ I would have said sh*t. But he didn’t do that.”
He continued on to say if the promotion really wants to honor him and his contributions that they should reward him financially for all the years he gave to them, instead of some honor that Jackson himself doesn't care about.
“I say, ‘Honor me with a f*cking check,’” Jackson said. “MMA fighters, we’re not like baseball players, we’re not like football players, we don’t get no pension or nothing like that. Those guys get in the Hall of Fame, they’ve got pensions and all that sh*t. Honor me with a check. I got a lot of injuries and pain for making the UFC a lot of money and selling a lot of pay-per-views, selling a lot of tickets. What do I give a f*ck about being in the Hall of Fame? To be famous? I didn’t fight to be famous."
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