Rampage makes a stooge of Dana White, abandons UFC for A-Team

You can always count on UFC president Dana White to give good quote. When he was asked last week about rumours that Quinton “Rampage” Jackson will be playing the Mr. T role of BA Baracus in the movie version of The A-Team, a move that would put his upcoming fight with fellow Ultimate Fighter coach Rashad Evans in jeopardy, White said, “Guess what Rashad Evans is thinking about right now. He’s thinking about beating your fucking ass. He’s not sitting around thinking about how him and his mom used to watch the fucking Love Boat together and he wants to get the role of Isaac the bartender.”

Well, Evans might want to think about getting some acting tips from Ted Lange because it looks like Rampage is abandoning ship to be in the movie. That’s right, the rumour from two weeks ago that was later debunked has been undebunked by the Vancouver Sun newspaper, which reports that the former light heavyweight champion is in the city to shoot the film for the next six weeks. (Of course, this could all be re-debunked until confirmation comes from Rampage, the UFC or the studio making the movie.)

That means his bout with Evans, expected to be on the December 12 UFC 107 card being held in Rampage’s hometown of Memphis (in order to capitalize on the fighter’s popularity), is off. Instead, we’ll get BJ Penn defending his lightweight belt against Diego Sanchez as the main event and a heavyweight showdown between former champion Frank Mir and Cheick Kongo).

A fair trade. Except there shouldn’t have been any trade at all. We should be seeing Penn-Sanchez, Mir-Kongo and Rampage-Evans on that card.

Once again, though, Rampage screws us over. Remember, he bailed on a fight with light heavyweight champ Lyoto Machida to be a TUF coach and settle on old grudge with Evans. Of course, Mauricio “Shogun” Rua stepped up to take on Machida at UFC 104 next month. And now Rampage doesn’t seem to care about his fight with Evans, something the entire season ten of TUF, which gets under way September 16, will be building toward.

So the season will be building toward… nothing. And by the time the two do get around to getting into the cage together, I’m not sure how much enthusiasm I’ll have. I know that Dana White will be pissed as TUF is little more than a big long commercial for the eventual TUF finale.

Imagine if another superstar athlete decided to skip out on their commitments to go to Hollywood. Sorry, LeBron James will be missing this season so he can star in the new Six Million Dollar Man movie; ditto Derek Jeter, who’s going off to play Robin in the next Batman movie. The NBA and Major League Baseball would come down pretty hard on them and the media would tear them to shreds. Rampage should get similar treatment.

So now I’m thinking, how about Evans, Machida and White for the big-screen update of The Three Stooges?