UFC President Dana White confirmed that the company is tentatively targeting the anticipated Rashad Evans vs. Quinton “Rampage” Jackson fight for this coming May.
“Probably May. May makes sense,” announced White at the UFC 108 press conference, adding, “That’s gonna be a sick card.”
UFC presently has two events scheduled for May; one, UFC 113 in Montreal, appears to be the likely setting for the Lyoto Machida vs. Mauricio “Shogun” Rua rematch. The other, UFC 114 in Las Vegas, will be a marquee UFC event and feature the second UFC Fan Expo.
Of course, as Evans’ UFC 108 victory over Thiago Silva also served to establish him as the next legitimate contender for the UFC Light Heavyweight Championship, there is undoubtedly some curiosity about whether Evans would truly prefer to continue his “The Ultimate Fighter” grudge with Rampage instead of getting another crack at Champion Lyoto Machida, the only man to score a win over Evans.
At press time, Evans is more than happy to do battle with Rampage prior to getting another shot at the title.
“Any time you can fight for the belt is always an opportunity and you can never turn that down,” said Evans, only to clarify that he would prefer to have one more non-title fight prior to doing battle for the gold.
— Evans’ interest in a non-title fight could be related to a degree of disappointment with his UFC 108 win over Silva. While he was happy to defeat such a dangerous opponent, he would have preferred to make a more definitive statement about his dominance.
He told reporters at the press conference, “Overall, yeah [I was happy with the win], but for the most part, I really wanted to go out there and be really impressive. I worked really hard in this camp and I integrated a lot of stuff that I normally don’t do.
“I was working to use a little bit more pressure to work my game. Going forward on someone like Thiago…you put yourself in the line of the fire.”
He also noted, “I’m disappointed that I kind of got tired in the third round,” but declared that Silva, too, had gassed in the third round. After rocking Evans with punches, Silva came under fire for letting “Sugar” recover–instead of aggressively pursuing Evans as the third round wrapped up, Silva stood back and even appeared to be showboating at times.
“He [was] giving himself a chance to recover. I felt him breathing…he’s really, really breathing hard. He was tired, and he was trying to do everything he can to motivate himself,” said Evans of Silva’s strategy at the end of the third round.