As legal battle brews over 'Rampage' Jackson, UFC digs in for the benefit of star-power

Quinton Jackson

Look quick, fight fans, and you may see it: Quinton Jackson, happy with a contract he just signed, briefly expressing pleasure and contentment with his new employer while shaking his head bitterly at the last one.

It’s the Halley’s Comet of the MMA universe. It’s rare enough to feel special, yet regular enough that you can’t help but wonder if you’ll live to see the next one. It also remains visible to the naked eye for only a short time, so take a good long look now before it disappears back into the vastness of space.

And don’t kid yourself; you know how it’s going to go. There’s only one way it can go with “Rampage” Jackson (35-11 MMA, 7-5 UFC), the former UFC light heavyweight champ who left the promotion with a bad taste in his mouth back in 2013 – then had a three-fight love affair with Bellator MMA before throwing up his hands and running back to his ex.

Bellator executives aren’t happy about it, but nobody can say we didn’t warn them. What they can and will say, it seems, is that Jackson is still contractually obligated to them, whether he likes it or not.

The way it’s shaping up now, the next big fight of Jackson’s career may very well take place in court. At 36 and with his athletic prime well behind him, he’s somehow become the object of both Bellator and the UFC’s affections – or at least the trophy they’ll fight for with the help of some increasingly active legal teams.

You have to admit, the timing is interesting. Here’s the UFC, a few days removed from being served in a class-action lawsuit filed by two former fighters and one current one, and it decides to open a second front in its legal war, wading into what looks like an automatic court battle with its biggest competitor.

The conspiracy theorist in me wants to tie the incidents together, and it wouldn’t be too tough. Disgruntled fighters allege that the UFC operates an illegal monopoly? What better way to disprove that claim than to get into and possibly lose a skirmish with a vibrant, active competitor?

Quinton Jackson

At the same time, both of these developments – the antitrust suit, the Jackson signing — have reportedly been in the works for many months. That they both fell into place within a few days of each other seems more like a coincidence than a grand scheme, especially when you consider that one was the work of the UFC while the other was the work of its detractors. It’s tough to coordinate legal filings with people who are actively working against you, and it’s not much easier to sign a mercurial guy like Jackson on a moment’s notice.

The result is a UFC legal calendar that’s as packed as the organization’s events schedule, and for what? For Jackson, a fighter whose best years are in the rearview mirror, and who has a shockingly consistent track record of souring quickly on employer-employee relationships? It seems, at first glance, not even close to being worth it.

This is the same guy who recently claimed that the initials U.F.C. stand for “u fight cheap.” This is the guy who vowed to leave the UFC and the sport of MMA altogether for, at various times, boxing, acting and maybe even pro wrestling. The only thing Jackson ever seems to want to do for any length of time is something else. And this is the guy the UFC absolutely has to have, under pain of lawsuit?

That tells us something, even if it’s something we already knew. We knew it when the UFC signed Phil “CM Punk” Brooks, a professional wrestler with zero MMA experience. We knew it when Bellator did big ratings with an old-timer’s match between Tito Ortiz and Stephan Bonnar.

It tells us, yet again, that this is a sport where it’s more valuable to be known than it is to be good. The most reliable indicator of future stardom is past stardom, and fight promoters who need to fill seats and sell pay-per-views will always choose stardom over skill.

If we don’t like it, we have only ourselves to blame. We’re the ones who keep watching, and keep paying, just hoping to see a little hint of the person our heroes used to be. The promoters are just giving us what we’ve proven we like, rather than what we claim to want.

With Jackson, it’s just a question of which promoter has the right to trade on the last fading light of his stardom. Both seem willing to fight for him. Only one can have him. Wherever he ends up, at least the losers in this battle can content themselves with the knowledge that it won’t be long before Jackson wishes he were somewhere else.

For more on the UFC’s upcoming schedule, stay tuned to the UFC Rumors section of the site.

* * * *

MMAjunkie’s Ben Fowlkes discusses “Rampage’s” return to the UFC:

view original article >>