It seems there is a new trend- these days fighters want to be movie stars and are willing to forfeit their MMA careers to achieve their goal. Chung Li of Strikeforce relinquished his title due to movie commitments and Quentin “Rampage” Jackson pushed a fight in his hometown to film “The A-Team”. Other fighters like Roger Huerta and Randy Couture, have toyed with the idea of quitting, but have come back to the cage. Fighters can go months between fighting and training. They face a lot of downtime, and some stay in shape and some balloon. Need proof, Google pics of Chuck Liddell before “Dancing with the Stars”.
Is it worth cutting into training time to film a movie? Sometimes, a film can benefit a person and the sport, if it’s a good one. In “Rocky 3″ the beginning of the film pitted Rocky Balboa against a then unknown Hulk Hogan. The result was a huge spotlight thrown on WWE’s first PPV Wrestlemania, an event that is to this day the biggest event in wrestling. But, if you look at films like “Suburban Commando”, “See No Evil.”, or the ever brilliant cinematic masterpiece “Ready to Rumble”, it is hard to take the athlete or the sport seriously. Even though we all know wrestling is pre-determined, the athleticism is real.
But having Rampage in a major motion picture does speak volumes in how far MMA has come. Before, if anyone from UFC was in a film it was straight to DVD, now this film is getting a huge push and release. Rampage’s fight with Rashad Evans had to be pushed back in order for him to get the right training, but imagine if Rampage were to win the fight then go off to fight for the light heavyweight title around the same time his movie were to come out. The media coverage for the PPV would be astronomical with everyone from the Hollywood press to ESPN.
But alas, for right now Rampage has called it quits for fighting. Due to comments made by UFC president Dana White, Rampage has decided to hang up his gloves. I give it a few months when all will be forgiven on both sides.
Raul Rangel