Quinton Jackson has raised plenty of eyebrows this week.
“Rampage,” who is a former Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) light heavyweight title holder, recently said his biggest regret was starting a professional mixed martial arts (MMA) career. Many didn’t understand why someone who has had a significant amount of success in the sport would say entering it was his biggest regret.
For Jackson, it comes down to the time he spent away from those he loved. When the Bellator 205-pounder became an MMA fighter, he left Memphis to move to California.
During a recent press conference hyping up his Bellator 175 bout with Muhammad Lawal on March 31, Jackson went more in-depth on his biggest regret (via MMAFighting.com):
“Man, half the time when you do interviews, you get negative people in the world who want to spin words and get clickbait, or just get people to listen to their interviews. It’s hard being in the public eye when you just keep it real. The guy asked me, on the spot, what was my biggest regret about doing MMA, and I thought about my family. I left everything back in Memphis and I moved to California. I left everything. My family, my car, my job, everything, and I left and moved to California by myself. My little sister was eight when I left, and I was very close to my little sister. I helped raise her. I used to change her Pampers, help her with schoolwork, take her to school, do all of that stuff. And now she’s a grown woman. I put her through college and everything, and she’s working and stuff, and I don’t know my sister anymore. I don’t know my family. So I just kept it real. The only thing I said, I wish I would’ve stayed home with my family. I would’ve been close to them.”
