Former UFC light heavyweight and long-term member of the Greg Jackson camp, Keith Jardine has spoke for the first time about the recent events that caused his good friend and training partner, Rashad Evans to walk away from the camp for good, explaining he supports the man dubbed “Suga” over what has gone down thus far.Speaking via ESPN, Jardine said:
“One thing to remember is Rashad is instrumental in this whole Jackson phenomenon starting. Without Rashad, who knows if it ever would have happened? He was one of the first guys to come in from out of town and join the team. And he was a guy who, when the sport was growing, he was winning fights and everybody was looking at him as he was getting better. People were calling Rashad up and he was bringing people to town, and without him, who knows if any of that would have ever happened? Without Rashad Evans, maybe this Jackson’s phenomena never happens.”
“You know, I haven’t thought about it too much, but no question I would be supporting Rashad. He’s one of my closest friends in the world. I have a lot of loyalty and friendship with him.”
“It’ll never be the same, you know? This gym, when the UFC broke out in 2005, was built on me, Rashad, Nate Marquardt, Joey Villasenor and Diego Sanchez…It all started from that interview that Jon did talking about the possibility of fighting with Rashad [with Ariel Helwani on Versus:]. That’s just something that doesn’t need to be said. Of course they could have been made to fight, and they both knew it. But for Jon to go out and say that made Rashad look like a punk, and that’s kind of what happened to start it all. It was already sensitive, so it blew up after that.”
The interesting thing will be if Jardine decides to follow his friend out of the door as well, moving to Denver, Colorado and the Grudge Training Center as he looks to gain a recall to the Las Vegas based promotions ranks. Stay tuned to MMABay in the coming weeks for more on this as we get it.
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