QUOTABLES: UFC 133 headliner Rashad Evans feels he won't get deserved respect until after his career is over

By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief

"I feel I'm one of those players who is not going to get his respect until after I'm done with my career. It's just the way things are. Everybody has this idea I'm such a villain and they don't want to give me any kind of props at all, no matter what I do. If I beat somebody, it's not because I'm not a better fighter than they are, it's because there was something wrong with them...

Some fighters are allowed to win in a fashion consistently, and they never get any criticism. Say, for instance, Clay Guida. He can grind out three-round decisions and people will never say anything like, 'Ah, he's a boring fighter.' Or, [Georges St. Pierre] can grind out a five-round decision and everyone wants to praise him for how great he is. But if I win the same way, people will say, 'Oh my God. Rashad dry-humped the guy for three rounds.' When I beat 'Rampage,' people said I only beat him because I wrestled him. Well, isn't wrestling a part of mixed martial arts? Wrestling is a part of mixed martial arts, right?

Well, he knew I am a wrestler, and he didn't stop me from wrestling. I see it like he didn't prepare right, and he lost on that aspect. It would be the same difference as if I went into a fight with a boxer and I get boxed up in my face. Well, I failed to prepare for my opponent. But for some reason, the same rules don't apply to me that they do to other guys."

-Rashad Evans talks to Kevin Iole at Yahoo! Sports about what he perceives as a double standard from fans inexplicably being placed on him, along with negativity he doesn't feel is deserved.

Penick's Analysis: One of the things working against Evans is his decisive wins over fan favorites in Chuck Liddell and Forrest Griffin. But for whatever reason, he has always had a contentious relationship with the fan base, with a segment very much on his side and a lot of fans that have just never gotten behind him. Maybe it started with Matt Hughes calling him a showboater in the second season of The Ultimate Fighter and him having some poor fights strewn in with his great performances. The reason the Rampage fight got so heavily criticized was because of the build-up of the fight as almost a blood feud between the two, but that doesn't mean Rashad really did anything wrong. He did what he needed to do to win the fight, it simply didn't live up to the arbitrary hype placed on it from The Ultimate Fighter season the two coached. It's a situation that is a bit baffling at times, and doesn't have a lot of real reasoning behind it, but a lot of people will simply not get behind Evans for one reason or another, and there might not be anything he can do to change that.

[Rashad Evans art by Cory Gould (c) MMATorch.com]

Steve The Snake Claveau  Rich No Love Clementi  Mark The Hammer Coleman Wes Soldier Combs  Ray Cooper