Rampage Jackson – “When I fought Forrest Griffin, Dana White thought I was on steroids”
Former UFC light heavyweight champion Quinton Rampage Jackson recently revealed that UFC President Dana White once accused him of taking steroids.
“When I fought Forrest Griffin, Dana White thought I was on steroids,” Jackson said while speaking to Brendan Schaub and Will Compton on the Fight Companion Podcast. “He said to me, personally, ‘Rampage, you’re on steroids, huh? In between fights, you gain a lot of weight, you get big’… I thought I had problems with my thyroids and this is when it first started happening. I was like, I ain’t on no d*mn steroids, I’m totally against that sh*t.”
Rampage Jackson came to the UFC from PRIDE Fighting Championships after Zuffa, the parent company of the UFC, purchased the now defunct Japanese mixed martial arts promotion.
There has always been a stigma in the MMA world that fighters took illegal substances such as steroids, while competing in PRIDE, because there weren’t regulations in place as in the United States.
“He did it himself, he tested me. He called me out, I didn’t test [positive]. He said, ‘d*mn man, I always thought you was on steroids.’ People in Pride [Fighting Championship], they think we always on steroids.”
Jackson defeated then champion Chuck Liddell at UFC 71 in May 2007 to claim the UFC light heavyweight championship in Las Vegas, Nevada. He would lose the title the following year to Ultimate Fighter winner Forrest Griffin at UFC 86.
Upon his exit from the UFC in 2013, Rampage would sign with Bellator MMA where he would fight three times before returning to the UFC for one fight during a contracting dispute and litigation that seemed to ruin his relationship with White. Jackson then fought for Bellator five more times and then leaving the sport in 2019 after a loss to Fedor Emelianenko at Bellator 237. His professional MMA record stands at 37-14.
