Quinton Jackson often criticized Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) matchmaker Joe Silva for matching him up against wrestlers who only wanted to take him down to the ground and "hump" him to avoid an all-out stand-up war.
He won't have the problem under the Bellator MMA umbrella.
For his first official fight with the Viacom-owned mixed martial arts (MMA) promotion, "Rampage" will take on another former UFC veteran as he faces Joey Beltran (see the poster here), a man known for throwing caution to the wind and letting the fight play out on the feet.
The fight will go down at Bellator 108 on Nov. 15, 2013 at the Revel Casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey, two weeks after Jackson was originally supposed to take on Tito Ortiz at Bellator 106 before "The People's Champion" suffered a neck injury which forced him off the card.
And as Beltran and Jackson gear up to collide in a catchweight fight of 210 pounds, "The Mexicutioner" revealed during a recent appearance on "The MMA Hour" that he has prohibited his family from attending the fight, because he expects it to "get ugly" ... and fast!
He explains:
"I already told my wife she's not coming to this fight. I talked to my family and I said, ‘Listen, it could get pretty ugly.' I'm going out there to do a job and my job is to entertain for Bellator fighting championships in this fight. Maybe we can start talking about strategizing and game-planning and stuff like that for the next couple of fights going into the 205 tournament, but, right now, me and 'Rampage' are being brought out there to entertain the crowd. We had a brief conversation on Saturday and we're both down to go out there and do it."
He continues:
"I didn't know what to expect, I never met Quinton before. First of all, he is very polite, very cool. He said, ‘I really respect your style of fighting, let's go out there and put on an exciting fight.' I looked him right in the eye and said, ‘I am 100-percent down, man, let's do it!'"
Joey admits his previous fight against Fabio Maldonado at UFC Fight Night 29 didn't live up to the all-out stand-and-bang brawl many were expecting, thanks in large part to the gameplan Team Beltran laid out to get a win, as opposed to just put on show by standing in the middle of the cage, "swinging like a couple of idiots."
Something Joey says fans should accept is not always realistic night in and night out.
While he came up short against Fabio, "The Mexicutioner" says now that the pressure of winning to hold on to employment is gone, it will allow him to go out and do what he does best, and that's trade punch-for-punch for sheer entertainment, something he feels is the reason he is being brought into the Bellator cage for against Jackson.
And both men, apparently, have a gentlemen's agreement to go out and bang it out for the fans.
How about it Maniacs, does this potential slugfest between "Rampage" and "The Mexicutioner" get you pumped for the Nov. 16 event?