Quinton Jackson has been in the game for a long time.
When “Rampage” fought Japanese MMA legend Kazushi Sakuraba way back in July 2001, however, Jackson was just 23 years old with a dozen professional bouts to his name. He was still a relative nobody, whereas Sakuraba was already “The Gracie Hunter,” a UFC tournament winner with victories over multiple top talents like champions Royce Gracie, Carlos Newton, and Vitor Belfort.
Sakuraba was also a massive star in Japan, while Jackson was making his first
trip to “The Land of the Rising Sun” for his PRIDE FC debut. In a recent appearance on the Coach Tim Welch’s Red Hawk Recap podcast, Jackson explains why PRIDE wanted him to lose, bullied him into cutting weight needlessly, and allegedly poisoned him to boot!
“My worst [weight] cut was when I had to fight Sakuraba. There were no weight classes, but they made me lose 27 pounds and gave me three hours to do it,” Jackson said (via Curtis Calhoun).
“They wanted me to do it the day of the fight, but you can’t do that. They wanted me to be like, really weak. I’ll say this right now: f—k PRIDE FC because of the way they treated me. I know people may not believe me, but I really do think they poisoned me or something. If you understand what Sakuraba was to PRIDE back then … I got the stuff that they give you [for weight cuts], and I had an upset stomach and then after the fight with Sakuraba, as soon as the fight was over in the locker room, I took a mean s—t and then I felt fine. These people who were my ‘handlers’ that my manager had to deal with, they were evil … they were like the Hunter Campbells of PRIDE, chemists, that’s what their profession was.
“They hated my guts,” Jackson continued. “When I fought Sakuraba, I was jet lagged, and more worried about s—ting myself instead of getting armbarred. It was a miracle that I even made it to that fight, because I had to pretend that I was totally dehydrated. I lost 27 pounds, and then I didn’t want to cut the weight anymore. To lose that much weight in three hours, could you imagine? I told them to carry me to the scale, that’s when I first started my acting career [LAUGHS].”
Of course, Jackson would go on to become a major star in PRIDE and Japan before eventually capturing UFC gold six years later. Sakuraba, meanwhile, would continue to fight the best of the best while severely undersized for years to come, but he was arguably at his peak that night versus “Rampage.”
As for the poisoning? It’s not the first time PRIDE FC has faced criminal accusations and shady dealings; that’s part of the reason why the promotion imploded two decades ago! In terms of credibility, I would rank Jackson’s conspiracy theory as more feasible than Nick Diaz getting poisoned by a faulty IV ahead of his title fight versus Georges St. Pierre.
… Unless the new “GSP” documentary is really a confession?
