I’m an MMA legend and former UFC champ and I was offered $1000 to take a DIVE in one of my fights
MIXED MARTIAL ARTS legend Quinton Jackson has sensationally claimed he was offered $1000 to “take a dive” in his Pride debut.
Jackson made his name competing in the now-defunct promotion in the early 2000s before eventually making his way to the UFC, where he became light-heavyweight champion.
In the years following the UFC’s former parent company’s acquisition of the Pride, several former fighters have revealed wild tales from their time in the promotion.
Accusations of the promoters encouraging fighters to take performance-enhancing drugs have been plenty, as well as claims the Yakuza were pulling the scenes.
Jackson was once a beloved figure by the promotion, who he claims once offered to pay him an extra $1000 for him to roll over in his debut against MMA legend Kazushi Sakuraba.
While explaining his frustrations with his pay back in the day, ‘Rampage’ said on his Fade on Site podcast: “Back in Pride, them motherf****s was making $200,000, $300,000 cash money and they was paying me $30,000, bro.
“And I was like their biggest star from America besides Kevin Randelman and Mark Coleman. And Heath Herring put me up on game.
“And I went back and I told them, ‘Oh, y’all paying me n***a money. What the f**k?’
“And then they got even madder at me and they didn’t put me in the first video game. All this s**t happened.
“I didn’t feel any loyalty to them. So I kind of started talking too much, I started saying too much – I’ll never do it again.
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“I talked about how I fought Sakuraba how they offered me $1000 to take a dive.”
Jackson, 45, claims his outspoken ways put him in the bad books of former Pride chief and current RIZIN president Nobuyuki Sakakibara – which he’s still in over two decades later.
“Pride still don’t f**k with me,” he exclaimed. “When I went to RIZIN in Japan, I had to buy my own tickets.
“I had to buy five tickets, I didn’t know where the seats were – it’s all in Japanese.
“So I get there and I’m kinda far away from the ring and I’m posting it. I don’t care [about being ringside], I don’t care about that shit.
“And fans were like, ‘Damn, n***a. They sat you in the nose bleeds.
“Then Nate [Diaz] gave me tickets to his fight and I was sitting front row and they were like, ‘Oh, you got better seats’ blah, blah, blah.”
Jackson doesn’t foresee a reconciliation between himself and his former employers, insisting: “They don’t f**k with me.
“Pride, they don’t f**k with me.”
Jackson fought a whopping 17 times under the Pride banner before joining the now-defunct World Fighting Alliance, which was bought by the UFC in 2007.
He bagged a title shot with a brutal stoppage of Marvin Eastman in his debut in February 2007 and went on to dethrone then-light-heavyweight champion Chuck Liddell two-and-a-half months later with a first-round finish.
Jackson registered one title defence before losing the belt to Forest Griffin in July 2008.
He made a further nine appearances in the promotion, during which he failed in an ill-fated bid to reclaim the 205lbs title in a 2011 clash with Jon Jones.
He was last in action four years ago against fellow MMA icon Fedor Emelianenko at Bellator 237 in Japan, where he suffered a first-round TKO defeat to the recently retired Russian.
SunSport has reached out to Nobuyuki Sakakibara for comment.