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Fighting: A Very Bad Hobby

Pick any piece of media leading up to Saturday’s UFC 114 and you’ll find Quinton Jackson swearing up and down he was prepared for Rashad Evans. “Best shape of my life,” he told training partners. (And, conveniently, television cameras.) The movie-set-fed flab he showed up wearing for training camp had melted off; he was properly irritated at Evans; he was arguably the harder puncher and more violent fighter. If you gave it only passing thought, he might have convinced you that a 14-month layoff and months out of shape wouldn’t matter.

Of course it does. Of course it did.

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Jackson had his moments in the fight -- particularly a third-round rally where he knocked Evans down -- but lacked the fuel to follow up. Evans darted in and out of danger, used his strikes to set up his takedowns and generally looked like a fit athlete who had his head on right.

Jackson’s biggest issue was one that afflicts a portion of fighters, and that’s the belief that fighting has an offseason. It’s okay to indulge in artery-collapsing food and playtime because they can snap back into shape so quickly. But does anyone stop to think about what even a few months of carrying around an extra 30 lbs. does to your joints, your heart and your work ethic?

Jackson is already pointing the finger at his movie commitments: pressure from the studio to remain uninjured, shooting taking away from training time, and the distractions of new celebrity. But no one told him part of his obligation to acting would be to remain sedentary, or become so unplugged from his first career that he announced his retirement. Randy Couture shoots films and still looks impossibly capable in the ring. (I’ve also never seen him walk around at 250 lbs. That helps.)

Fighting as a part-time investment, both physically and emotionally, is a recipe for disaster, and nowhere is that on more grueling display than in the UFC. There are no “warm-up” fights to coddle fighters coming off a layoff, injury-induced or not. Virtually every fighter in the organization is a stone-cold mercenary who would rip your head off if it meant more sponsorship deals and a title shot. Clocking in for half-days could work in Japan, where you can alternate legitimate fights with circus tours; in the States, it’s suicide.

Jackson has a big choice in front of him. While common sense offers that he has a lifetime to act and only a few years to be a competitive athlete, the irony of Hollywood is that they may only be interested while he’s a UFC commodity. That means possibly bagging a career in acting for the highly uneven promise of pursuing success in an increasingly competitive UFC field at the age of 32, with 10 years already logged on the circuit. Jackson’s UFC deal is lucrative, but dropping another fight or two could put him in serious danger of getting clipped.

The ideal would be to take film offers when they come and not allow yourself to soften up between fights. But you’re still facing athletes who have no such distractions.

Athletes want to be musicians; actors want to be athletes. No one ever seems completely satisfied with their lot in life. But Jackson may have proved that actors can’t be fighters.

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