Rampage quits the UFC!?

I am sure most of you MMA enthusiasts and UFC fans saw this headline yesterday. At first it caught me off guard and I thought, "oh no, he cannot do that before he fights Rashad." WHATEVER....there is no way that this is legitimate. Either Rampage is on a momentary high (which is possible after last years driving incident)or this whole thing is being staged by Dana White and the UFC to jack up the numbers for a mega pay-per-view event. I tend to think it is the latter. Vince McMahon and the WWE could not have pulled off a better stunt than this. We are only into the 2nd week of the new TUF series, with new people being drawn in because of "Kimbo Slice" and the UFC figured out how to make a huge ratings run off this new group of viewers who are tuning in to the UFC for the first time.

If it truly is this last option, and its all a publicity stunt, then watch out for Don King next, because the UFC is going to hell in a hand basket. Honestly, I thought I saw all this coming when they first announced the fight between Rampage and Rashad. They had the big stair down and then all the hype about this is going to be "black on black crime" like you have never seen before, and then all the feigned tension between the two, and I thought to myself, "this is a joke." Well, apparently it is no joke. Here is why: Rampage is quoted as saying that he did not want to "mess up his second career." Are you kidding me, "his second career"? Now that is utterly delusional or he is being fed talking points from a UFC written script that is so laughable they must be paying him huge dollars to make such ridiculous comments. Does he really think he is going to make a run at an Oscar?


Here is the end game, look for this to be talked about and blown up large for a few months right up until the end of the TUF show. You are going to be seeing the UFC talking about this in an end of series special aired on Spike where Dana sits around throwing f-bombs and Rashad telling us how disappointed he is because he does not get to settle the score with Rampage, and then there will be the inevitable interviews with Rampage's coaches and close friends who say that they think he has turned a new page in his life and has moved on. Then after the show airs and more public support for the fight has built up, and after the UFC does some polling to figure out how big the audience might be for this UFC soap opera, then Dana will go to Rampage and tell him how much of a cut he will receive from the huge pay-per-view event and WE WILL SEE RAMPAGE AND RASHAD IN THE OCTAGON sometime in March, as it had already been rumored to be re-scheduled for in the first place.

In the mean time, the UFC gets some headlines, Dana becomes an even bigger whipping boy for driving a star fighter out of the UFC, and Rampage gets time he needs to heal up and make toothpaste commercials or do whatever it is that his new acting career leads him to do next. In a sense, everybody wins. Bottom line, we will see this fight, which is good for fans because it will be a good one, but in the end it will be a loss for the UFC and their loyal fans because it means that the UFC has gone full on WWE, and will no longer be a serious MMA competition venue.