(photo taken from ufc.com)
Keith “The Dean of Mean” Jardine is both mentally and physically prepared to take on former light heavyweight champion Quinton “Rampage” Jackson this upcoming Saturday night at UFC 96. He admits that Rampage has a solid background in wrestling and his strikes are beyond dangerous. Nonethless, Jardine seems more focused coming into this fight as he currently training with top UFC fighters including current light heavyweight champion Rashad “Sugar” Evans, Nate Marquardt and even Joey Villasenor.
On March 7th, Jardine is set to face one of the biggest challenges in his UFC career. Although he respects Rampage for his fight skills in the MMA game, he’s confident that he’ll leave the octagon as the winner. Here’s a snip from Jardine himself:
“Quinton (Jackson) is one of the hardest hitters in the game…you can’t really prepare for something like that. You’ll have to figure it out in the ring, and that’s what I’m looking forward to…you gotta be pushed in practice harder than your fight…you gotta experience those bad situations in practice so when they happen in a fight, you’ve been there before and it’s no big deal. I feel I’m lucky to be here at Jackson’s because I have Joey Villasenor, Nate Marquardt, and Rashad Evans beating up on me all the time – so I’m a pretty lucky guy…It’s great that I’m always getting fights like this…I get to beat somebody else who used to have the title, so that’s great for me. As far as after I win, me and Rashad have always talked about that, and he’s here helping me train right now, so there’s no way that we’re gonna fight after this. But I’m gonna have a long career, and I have no problems jumping to heavyweight, and no problem knocking out contenders either.”
