After years of hype, a long-rumored boxing bout between Quinton Jackson and former WBO heavyweight champ Shannon Briggs is really happening.
We can understand why you may be skeptical. Jackson has been talking about this fight for years, and the number of times he’s set a date only for it not to happen is high. But the latest date and location from “Rampage” sounds real: June 1st in Qatar. As is often the case these days, we need Middle Eastern royalty to get involved for fights to happen.
It’s just the first of a few boxing bouts Jackson intends on having. He explained the move from MMA to the sweet science on the latest episode of The MMA Hour.
“I’ve done everything else,” he said. “I’ve done wrestling, I’ve done jiu-jitsu, and I’ve done kickboxing. I’ve put them all together, but I’ve never done boxing. So now all my four martial arts, I will have done at least one fight in that martial art. So that’s a personal goal of mine, and I’m going to fight until I can’t fight anymore because I still love it, and I want to have a couple more boxing matches before I get too old, right? Because I want to try it.”
“This first one with Shannon, I know he’s a little bit older than me, he might be a better boxer than me because I never boxed before. I’m looking at this like a warmup fight.”
That’s a dangerous idea. Shannon “The Cannon” was active up until 2016 and wrapped his boxing career with nine wins in a row — the last five via knockout. He may be 52, but Jackson is 45. MMA fans are gonna have to hope he makes it past Briggs to get to some retro fights we have more interest in.
“After that, I want to rematch Rashad [Evans] in a boxing match,” Jackson said. “He likes to wrestle a bit too much. I think we throw them thangs. And then after Rashad, I’ll call out Wanderlei Silva for that rubbermatch.”
At least he’s stopped trying to make a Daryl Schoonover fight happen.
“Rampage” Jackson vs. “Suga” Rashad Evans went down at UFC 114 back in 2010 and was largely considered a letdown after being built up by the biggest season of The Ultimate Fighter ever. Would it be nice to see Jackson and Evans finally slug it out? Me and the twelve other homies who are still around from those ancient times think so. Another plus: Rashad Evans doesn’t have CTE like Wanderlei Silva, so that feels less dirty too.
What do you think of Quinton Jackson’s comeback plans, Maniacs? Intrigued, or did the best before date on these fights expire a decade ago? Let us know in the comments below.
This story originally appeared on MMA Mania
