Mon Aug 03, 2009 9:31 am EDT
Rashad Evans' "Sugar" persona isn't making him lots of friends amongst MMA fans. He seems to have different personalities in and out of the cage. Once he gets amped up in the Octagon, he's likely to do a little dance, like he did during several fights on The Ultimate Fighter 2 or even grab his crotch and blow a kiss, as he did in his fight against Forrest Griffin. But make no mistake, the guy takes fighting seriously. Evans sat down with ESPNRadio1100 and suggested that there are some fighters who don't. The former light heavyweight champ thinks Michael Bisping is one of those guys. Evans was asked by Yahoo! Sports' Kevin Iole about Dan Henderson's knockout at UFC 100 (4:44 mark):
"I was actually excited not because I dislike Michael Bisping. It's the fact that I seen him out at the club the week before the fight, and I go up to him and tell him 'dude you got a fight coming up.' And he was like 'what's it to you mate' and he got all mad and salty about it, and he like wanted to fight to me."
Evans also strongly defended what many folks thought was a Henderson cheap shot after Bisping was flat on his back saying you don't stop fighting until the referee stops the fight.
Evans is set to face Quinton Jackson in December as the capper for TUF 10. There's been plenty of heat between the two, including the near brawl cageside at UFC 100. Sugar went into further detail about why he and Rampage can't get along:
"He thinks I crossed the line during the face off. When the UFC has us go up there and do the face off, I think he crossed the line. He started talking to me, I took offense to it. I felt like he was disrespecting my guy. You know that's my brother dude. [Jackson]made it seem like he didn't give it all that he had and that Jardine got lucky."
Evans said Jackson started things at UFC 100 by asking him what he was looking at. TUF 10 debuts on September 16.
Cagewriter is an MMA blog edited by Steve Cofield. Email him, and follow him on Twitter.

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38 Comments
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I personally think Belfort-Franklin is going to be a lot of fun. A lot of people have been wanting to see Couture-Noguiera. And the beauty of how they run UFC is that the card under it will surely have some good fights. I'm not extremely excited about 102 since Hamill dropped out, but 103 looks strong top to bottom (Swick-Kampmann, CroCop-Dos Santos, Koscheck-Trigg with a solid undercard).
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Less than half of Rampage's wins have been by KO. And Rashad Evans goes to decision often. Getting knocked out by Machida is nothing to be ashamed of.
I think it ought to be a good fight, and I see no reason why it wouldn't go the distance.
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I just wish there was a way for Rampage AND Evans to lose the same fight. I hope it's a long fight, where they both beat the living crap out of each other for almost the entire three rounds. Then, after both of their eyes are beat shut, one of those rare double knockouts would be sweet.
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Some of you people take this stuff WAYYYY to personal. I make a comment about how I would rather pay money out of my pocket for title fights vs. nontitle fights and all of a sudden, I don't enjoy good fights, I'm not a die-hard MMA fan, and I like the WWE??? I've liked MMA since UFC 1. I used to watch the ppvs when they would come out on VHS..and I mean all of them. I love watching MMA fights regardless of the organization..WEC, Strikeforce, UFC, whatever. I state an opinion and get called "BUSH LEAGUE"??? WTF??? Take it easy people.....
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JJ: You did make it sound that you were only gonna buy ppv's only when a title is at stake. That's cool, a lot of people share the same mindset. A lot of other people just wanna watch fights period. I myself would pretty much be excited to see 2 senior citizens duke it out in a cage.
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All I'm saying is they can't all have title fights. I don't think it's THAT typical for UFC fighters to fight three times in a year. If they do, it's barely. And when titles are involved, there are so many moving parts that fights often fall through or have to wait until other "contendership" type fights are worked out. Then when you consider the number of legitimate main events out there that aren't title fights, why waste a PPV with a title fight and a huge non-title fight unless it's your New Year's or Super Bowl show (or UFC 100)?
If you want them to reduce the number of PPVs they have a year by putting more stuff on free TV, fine. But as long as we keep buying the PPVs, why should they stop? Iole wrote an article a while ago saying boxing promoters were out of touch because they put too many mediocre fights with weak undercards on PPV. But I don't think you have that problem with UFC...I think they have the balance between free and PPV pretty well figured out right now. If they see PPV numbers falling, they'll react. If Spike or a network makes it worth their while to put a blockbuster card on free TV, or if they have a competitor's show to counter, they'll do it then too.
We'll just have to agree to disagree on the quality of UFC 103. Those three fights I listed are absolutely huge for all 6 fighters, they affect the top 5 in their divisions, and they should all be entertaining fights. I agree that Swick is no match for GSP, but it has nothing to do with experience. Swick has 16 fights (2 losses), 10 in UFC (only 1 loss by decision to Okami). If he's not ready not, when will he be? Kampmann could be a tougher out than people give him credit for, and he's coming down from middleweight..
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If you saw the fight, up until the knockout, it was anybody's game, Mike looked pretty good until he got caught, and he lasted into the 2nd round...How long would you have lasted?
The fact that Hendo chose to put a capper on his sweet knockout punch isn't any different than most fights you see happen in the real world my friend...Adrenaline and frustration combined with a little jaw jacking before hand made for a sweet finish...not a cheap shot.
Any fighter who sees victory happening gets Hyped, Pumped even, anyone in a fight knows that feeling, and emotions take over...The ref did his job, but you could see Hendo was done with Mike before that.
Understand what training happens before a fight, and maybe pick your comments more wisely when you see a fighter relaxing, and enjoying life before his big fight, maybe you won't feel compelled to write articles with biased opinion. " Hey, Good luck on your fight next week " probably would have gotten you a beer, even a " Cheers Mate "...But who wants to read that, right?
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