Jason Jackson details the PFL/Bellator 'worst circumstance I've ever been under' that led to title loss

Don’t be surprised if Jason Jackson heads into his next fight with a little extra motivation and a chip on his shoulder.

Jackson (18-5) will be one of three former Bellator champions who are part of the eight-man tournament field for the 2025 PFL welterweight season. Andrey Koreshkov and Logan Storley join him as ex-Bellator champs, and likely tournament favorites, in the field.

Jackson’s motivation will come from the fact he has to call himself a former Bellator titleholder to begin with. He knocked out Yaroslav Amosov to win the belt in November 2023 in what was Bellator’s final event under old management.

Once Bellator was snatched up by the PFL, plenty of publicized internal changes started taking place. And though Jackson knocked out Ray Cooper III in a PFL vs. Bellator champ-vs.-champ fight a year ago, he said he was put into difficult circumstances by the promotion when he put his belt on the line against Ramazan Kuramagomedov this past June in Dublin.

“It was my night, but I felt like my opportunity, it wasn’t fair for me. The playground wasn’t fair, if I had to say it that way. It wasn’t level. It wasn’t a level playground,” Jackson recently told MMA Junkie Radio. “I didn’t feel like I lost that fight one bit. The circumstance that it was under was the worst circumstance I’ve ever been under in my life of fighting. I felt like everything was unorganized, and it showed that night because I wasn’t myself at all.”

Jackson lost a narrow decision to Kuramagomedov with a trio of 48-47 scores from the judges in the five-round title fight.

When Jackson gets going in the PFL’s welterweight season in April, he’ll be doing it in Orlando, Fla., which probably gives him an early mental boost given he trains at Kill Cliff FC in South Florida. That takes issues he had ahead of the Kuramagomedov fight out of the equation.

“Ramazan got to Ireland 10 days (ahead of the fight). I got to Ireland on the Wednesday of the fight and I had to cut weight,” Jackson said. “I had to stick with all the obligations. I had to do everything. (I was) jet lagged – I had to run to New York because Bellator/PFL did not get my visa. I don’t know how they got that issue. I’ve traveled to Ireland, I’ve traveled to Saudi Arabia, and never had an issue until that one night. So to me, that’s like an unfair advantage.

“I had jet lag, all the stuff going into the fight, and I was so mad. I was fighting out of anger the first two rounds because I was just so upset that I was being put in that position and nobody had any leniency or empathy whatsoever. Jason Jackson got out here three days (before the fight), still trying to make the show happen. Let’s not make him do all these media (obligations) and cut weight. I still had to do the same thing Ramazan did on 10 days (in Dublin). I had to do it within three days, everything.”

Jackson doesn’t know yet whom he’ll be matched up against when the eight-man tournament starts. But fighting angry, he thinks, might not have been for him.

“I fought angry before already on (Dana White’s) Contender (Series in 2017), and I broke my leg,” he said. “I fought angry on ‘The Ultimate Fighter,’ and I break my hand. Now I fought angry and it caused me to lose my belt. I have to take this in consideration and just go have fun – be the best Jason Jackson I can be out there. That’s when I’m unstoppable, untouchable.”