Quinton “Rampage” Jackson: I was the first Conor McGregor

This Friday, in the main event of Bellator 175, MMA legend Quinton “Rampage” Jackson will take on wrestling specialist Muhammed “King Mo” Lawal in a compelling heavyweight grudge match.

In advance of this fight, Rampage explained to Yahoo! Sports that he is not a fan of King Mo’s wrestling based style.

“Our sport has gotten so popular with all the excitement and the people like Dan Henderson, Wanderlei Silva, Chuck Liddell, Vitor Belfort, Tito Ortiz,” he said (via BloodyElbow.com). “Tito was a wrestler, but he’d take you down and ground and pound you. Those are the guys who made this sport super popular.”

“But then you get guys like King Mo and, with all due respect, Rashad Evans and D.C. [Daniel Cormier], who just like hugging people on the ground. You hear the people complaining about that, and I don’t want to fight that way. I want to have exciting fights. If we ask fans to buy tickets and come down and sit there and watch fights for hours, we have to give them their money’s worth.”

Rampage then compared his own entertaining style to that of UFC superstar Conor McGregor, referring to himself as the first Conor McGregor.

“I was the first Conor,” he said. “I was Conor Mc-[N-word],” Jackson said. “He can talk and say what he wants and talk about money and say he’s in it for the money and nobody opens their mouth and says anything negative about what he is saying.”

“I’ve been doing the same stuff, but everybody’s trying to shut me up. And then there are people who take me out of context and say, ‘Oh, he’s just in it for the money. He don’t love this no more.’ You know what? What I do is try to entertain people. It’s all I’ve ever tried to do. I’m an entertainer and I’m always going to try to entertain people.”

What do you think of these comments from Rampage? Sound off, PENN Nation!

This article first appeared on BJPenn.com on 3/28/2017.