Las Vegas — Roughly eight years after their first meeting, in which Montel Jackson made his UFC debut on short notice, Jackson and Ricky Simon ran things back at UFC Vegas 121.
This time, it was Jackson (16-4) coming away with a TKO victory, avenging a decision loss in the pair’s first meeting. With that in mind, it was something of a surprise to hear that Jackson was indifferent about the victory.
“It feels good. I’m a little bit indifferent. This one is, I’m grateful for Ricky and everything that Ricky helped me get to this point. Without Ricky, I probably wouldn’t be in the UFC,” Jackson told media outlets including Cageside Press following the bout at the Meta Apex this past Saturday. “I fought Ricky on short notice. He could have said no. He could have held out or found somebody else, but he said yeah he’d fight me. I’ll forever be grateful to Ricky.”
Still, Jackson has the win, and up next, he wants “anybody. If anything’s short notice or whatever and it makes sense, yeah, I’m ready. We can do it.”
Key to Saturday’s performance was turning up the volume. After losing a couple of close split decisions back-to-back, Jackson wanted to be sure that he was throwing more.
“Yeah, that was one of the biggest things, was just volume. Putting the volume out there, not worrying about if they land or not, or how they land,” he told Cageside Press. “Just get the punches out there, give him something to think about. And hopefully the punches I do miss or I don’t make great contact with, it leads then to that big one.”
Jackson also reacted to a submission attempt, admitting that when it comes to finishes, it’s the KOs that show out. That, explained Jackson, comes down to short attention spans in the modern MMA fanbase.
“Submissions are okay, but the knockouts bring the money, man. The knockouts bring the viewership, the knockouts bring in ‘I wanna see that guy fight that guy.’ Submissions not that much, man,” stated Jackson. “It’s hard to package a submission in like a minute. Everybody’s attention span is so short now, that they wanna see a clip. It’s hard to get a whole trend, like, a whole, back-and-forth of a submission when you can just look at a knockout, boom, that guy’s out. Which one made more sense?”
We’ll answer that question after we watch three more reels on Instagram.
Watch the full UFC Vegas 121 post-fight press conference with Montel Jackson above.