Quinton “Rampage” Jackson (@rampage4real) is a mixed martial artist, actor and former UFC Light Heavyweight Champion. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet at West Coast Creative Studio in Hollywood to talk about his legendary MMA career, beating Chuck Liddell to win the UFC Light Heavyweight Championship, what went wrong with his run in TNA Wrestling, how he got the role to play B.A. Baracus in “The A Team”, the real story behind destroying the door on The Ultimate Fighter, powerbombing Ricardo Arona in PRIDE, his favorite flavor of F3 Energy, his involvement with United Fight League and much more!
Quote I’m thinking about: “Life is a guy trying to play a violin solo in public while learning the music and his instrument at the same time.” – Joseph Campbell
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On taking part in Bloodsport:
“I miss it. It’s been four years since I had an MMA fight. But Josh Barnett hit me up the other day, like, Hey, you got time to train MMA because I’ve been training boxing. I was like, Oh, damn, I need to go start training MMA because I’m doing Bloodsport for him in Japan and that’s pro wrestling but it’s like the MMA fight.”
On being nice in real life but scary in the cage:
“I don’t know. I know I have two personalities I know that much about myself. You know, I’m two people I’m Quinton and I’m Rampage and it just happens. [What are most people calling you in real life?] Most people call me Rampage. But you know, but I have a lot of names and some people call me Q, some people call me Page some people call me Ram.”
On how difficult it was to dial it back in wrestling:
“That’s totally different. If it’s pro wrestling, and stuff like that, if it’s not like MMA style. Yeah, that’s fun. I always wanted to be a pro wrestler. So that’s fun for me. I’m not really trying to hurt nobody or knock anybody out in pro wrestling.”
On wanting to be a pro wrestler:
“I didn’t even know what MMA was. When I started wrestling in high school I was disappointed when I found out it wasn’t pro wrestling. Because you know, I grew up in a certain side of Memphis where we didn’t have wrestling in high schools. Then my mom remarried, we moved to a better side of Memphis and the schools were better. And they had a wrestling team and I offered to go join his pro wrestling team. And I get there and like they got singlets on and they hook on each other and I was like what the hell is this Coach? I was like where the ring at?”
On falling in love with collegiate wrestling:
“I fell in love with it because I picked people up and slammed them. And my coach, he taught me how to slam people legally. I had to drop to my knees first before I actually let them hit the mat. That’s the legal way of slamming in collegiate. But freestyle you can do whatever you want.”
On becoming an MMA fighter:
“This was all a mistake. So I ended up going to college for wrestling and I got injured. Then I came back home and one of the guys I used to wrestle against him and I became good friends at the time. We always used to see each other in the finals of a tournament in our weight class. We used [to be] the two best wrestlers in Memphis. And his coach and my coach were best friends. So you know, we had to practice together sometimes. So we stayed in touch over the years and when I came back home to Memphis he was training for an MMA fight. He took me to my first MMA fight, I had never really seen it. One of my coaches in college was doing UFC and I still didn’t watch it. I just heard about it, Vladimir Matyushenko, he was one of my coaches in college, he fought in UFC back in the early days. So he actually took me to a fight and I saw this guy submit the guy and push his face off with his feet and I was like man, I would like to fight that guy. And, you know, time goes by and he asked me to help them train for a fight. I’m there for like, two or three days, I’m having to train for a fight wrestling and he showed me some stuff. And the coach said like, Hey, you want to fight? Like yeah, when? He was like three days, the champion’s opponent pulled out, okay? Now I was like, Okay, I don’t know anything. Then my friend said like this the guy you said you want to fight. I signed me up. So I went out there and I fought the champion of Memphis with three days notice. I beat him by decision and then my friend is like, Oh, you a fighter now.”
Who did Rampage love in wrestling:
“I grew up watching Memphis. I used to love The Moon Dogs. Jeff Jarrett. I used to like Macho Man Randy Savage. Ultimate Warrior was my favourite, Hulk Hogan, Andre the Giant. I like Junkyard Dog, that was my little brother’s favourite. I like a lot of people.”
On possibly pursuing wrestling instead of MMA:
“I was thinking that it was going to be my destiny to be a wrestler. But you know, I used to be friends with Chris Benoit and I talked to him one day and he was like, Man, I’m always on the road. And I’m like, what? He said, Yeah, we’ve got like, 300 some days a year. I was like, wow, I didn’t know that. That’s that’s basically when I changed my mind. I don’t think I could do it. I don’t think I can keep that schedule.”
On facing Chuck Liddel for the UFC Light Heavyweight Championship:
“I had no idea I was getting the title shot. I think Joe Rogan asked me in an interview or something in the cage. I played it down like No, no, I’m not ready to fight. Because at this time of my career people thought I was finished. Because in Japan, maybe like couple of years prior I had turned real religious. I fought Shogun and I got injured going into the fight and people didn’t know that, I didn’t say anything about it. And he beat me pretty fast. He like broke the muscle to my ribs. And then people thought I was done. So you know, they thought that maybe Chuck could beat me because Chuck was on his comeback tour when he had beaten everybody that that beat him in the past and I was the last guy. So I figured I figure that’s why they brought my contract to get me over to the UFC. I was like, yeah, they will put me with Chuck. But I knew I could be Chuck.”
On not being in the UFC Hall of Fame:
“I don’t know. You know, the weird thing about me is that I didn’t start fighting to be famous. So I really don’t care for the Hall of Fame. I don’t know if these guys called Dana up and said hey put me in the Hall of Fame. I really don’t care for the Hall of Fame, like what was gonna do for me?”
On his relationship with Dana White:
“I don’t talk to him much. He and my manager are really close friends and every now and then they are on FaceTime he sees me and he says, what’s up, but he always reminds me of that movie I did. You know, that’s when our relationship went more south. I took a movie over a fight one time, The A Team.“
On losing money for taking the movie role:
“I got paid like less than 10% of what I get paid for a fight. And so you know, I did it because I’m a big fan of it, I like doing movies. I’m a big kid and I was hoping to get more movie roles. All I can say about that is that the manager I had at the time was a f*cking idiot. And he thought was a good idea to sign with the same agency that represented the UFC and I didn’t get any more movie offers. So that’s all I’m gonna say.”
Was that a bad decision to take the movie role?
“I don’t think it was a bad decision. Because A Team, it brought me and my father, not closer together. We always been close. But back when I was young, that’s one of the ways my dad and I bonded, we used to watch A Team together and stuff. And I’m a weird guy. I’ve never been a real big fan of anybody. But I’ve always been a big fan of A Team and Mr T. I always was one of the biggest fans. It was like a personal thing for me to do the movie. You know, my dad went through a bad patch in his life with alcohol and stuff as I got older, and now he’s back on the straight and narrow. So I brought him out to the set, and he got to be a big kid and stuff like that. It was good fun for my dad and he talks about this one that was one of the best times he ever had, because he had never been to Canada, never been nowhere. He got to be on set and see The A Team movie and stuff like that. And my dad had a great time. So, you know, I wouldn’t trade that for the world.”
On why he is doing more movies now:
“I love it, man. You know, I’m a big kid. Because I get to shoot at people, doing that type of action and stuff like that. It’s fun. I enjoy it. I’ve done a lot of movies. But you know, most of them. People will never see them. They were B movies, but they’re fun to do.”
On his TNA run:
“I did TNA I was so stoked to do it. They had me and Kurt Angle do to stare down. I thought this is going to be huge. I thought like, oh, yeah, you know, I was going to find out a few more MMA fights then did leave to go to pro wrestling. I don’t know how they dropped the ball. I had my own gym at the time and they put a wrestling ring there. They were supposed to be training me and they never trained me.”
On how the TNA deal fell apart:
“You want me to tell the truth? All right so at that time, I started deal with Paramount Pictures. Remember that dumb manager I told you I had from England who thought was a good idea to sign with the same agents that represent UFC? This fight manager, he thought he thought was a good idea to sign with them He was the same motherf*cker who went over the contract and everything and I did a deal with Paramount Pictures. So I did a deal with Paramount Pictures and they wanted me to do movies, pro wrestler fight, and give me a reality show. But they offered me this huge contract when in all reality, they just wanted me to fight for cheap. So they promised me like movies and then they promised me my own reality show and I found TNA and all of it was a sham. So I don’t read contracts it’s my manager’s job to read the contract. And so Paramount actually tried to sue me because I didn’t want to fight. It’s all designed for me to fight. I’ll go make money doing this make money doing that but they wanted me to fight for $250,000. I was like I haven’t fought for $250,000 in f*cking years. [They said] But you got to make like 10 million a year with this contract. And so when they sued me, I got my own attorneys and stuff, I fired that manager and I broke down the f*cking contract and they said we going to get you in front of movie execs. They never said that they’re gonna get me in movies. They said like they’re gonna give me a meeting with people who make movies. The reality show, is it was actually shoulder programming like a 24/7 type of thing. It wasn’t like a reality show. Everything was bullsh*t, they just said all this to get me to fight for cheap. And the pro wrestling was under the same thing when I supposed to get paid like a certain amount every time I made an appearance it would take them like six months to even pay me. It was just all bullsh*t and I was like, f*ck this sh*t [Was it TNA that wasn’t paying you?] Yeah, everyone was supposed to pay. Then I found out that Paramount Pictures, they got all these channels and all this stuff, but it wasn’t like what they sold it as. I felt like they always competing against each other, Spike TV was still around and stuff like that. It was all competing against each other.”
On the WWE appearance in 2010 possibly leading to discussions:
“It never led to discussions, I really liked it over there. But it was really cool. But none of guys will let me powerbomb them but I understand now. I talked to Ric Flair he was on my podcast. Ric Flair told me like yeah, they let you powerbomb me, they don’t know you know what you’re doing? Okay, it makes sense, though. [You did a chokeslam?] Yeah, yeah, I did a chokeslam and Big Show gave me sh*t about it. You want to use my move? Like come on, bro. He was joking, he was cool.”
On his current condition:
“I’m all f*cked up. If I sit down and play video games too long, and I have to get up and go to the restroom. I’m like stiff for like the first like 20 seconds. I don’t know. But when I wake up in the morning, I’m fine. Most days when I’m in a clear mind, I wake up, go for a run, I’m okay. When I get back from the run I ice my knees and stuff like that. But I go to Columbia, I go to bio accelerator, stem cells. Oh my God, those guys changed my life. So I’m good. But I guess the way I’d be sitting when I sit down because my right knee is really bad. I am supposed to get stem cells on it once a year but I took a couple of years off. So last time I went I thought it was gonna be training for a fight. So I just did my elbow and my shoulder. I didn’t do my knee. Because you can’t train like it’s hard for a while. So I regret that now. I wish I would have done my knee. So I’m gonna go back and get my knees done. At first my hand hurt, I had like a fracture that wouldn’t heal up. But I got stem cells and healed up in less than a week. My hands are small for a small for a fighter.”
What is Rampage Jackson grateful for?
“My kids, my friends and that I met Harrison Rogers.”
