If you ask Dana White, Saturday night will be the last time we see either fighter who opened the UFC 225 main card in the UFC again. First, White addressed the future of CM Punk:
“That should be a wrap,” White said at the UFC 225 post-fight press conference “The guy’s 39 years old. I love the guy. He’s the nicest guy in the world. We gave him two shots, and he had a lot of heart tonight in this fight. And yeah, I think he should call it a wrap.”
Though Mike Jackson got the nod as he said he would during the lead-up to the fight, White still considers him a winless man following his performance against Punk Saturday night:
“Michael Jackson, I’m not happy with. This guy was acting like a goofball tonight. You get this opportunity to come in and fight CM Punk, and you’re doing like bolo punches to the body…never looked like he was trying to finish the fight ever. It looked like he could have finished the fight a few times, never tried. I don’t know what that guy did for a living before we gave him this shot, but whatever it is, he needs to go back and do that again. He’s 0-2 as far as I’m concerned.”
As for the controversy regarding the placement of the fight, Jackson managed to do what no other critic of the fight could: make White second-guess the decision to put the fight on the main card: “I got the sense that he’s a complete fucking idiot, and I couldn’t wait for that fight to end. And I regretted not putting it on FightPass. That’s how I felt about it.”
It looks like it is a “wrap” for both Punk and Jackson, as White did not speak with any ambiguity regarding the future of Jackson:
“That’s it for his UFC career. I wouldn’t put that kid in The Contender Series.”
Ouch. As it turns out, Dana White is correct about one thing. Jackson did not escape Chicago without an L. But it was White himself that dealt it to him with this public knockout blow to Jackson’s UFC career.
Do you agree with White’s decision to publicly release Mike Jackson?