Cheick Kongo fought the best of the best during his nearly seven year run with the UFC but ultimately the heavyweight title eluded him during his time with the organization.

He has since moved on and now has his sights set on knocking off the men on the mountaintop of the Bellator heavyweight division and capturing gold in his new home.

In our newest installment of gym stories Kongo takes us back to the very first training experience, a heated sparring session, with one of the most legendary fighters and personalities in the history of the sport, none other than Quentin "Rampage" Jackson.

"Today I can do an interview but depending on what I say I might not be able to talk tomorrow because he (Rampage) might break my mouth." Kongo said. "The first time we ever sparred was right when he was fighting for the UFC title. I was invited to be one of his main sparring partners for his camp.

"The very first session he was hitting hard. He was trying to kill me. I said 'Don't you want to save some energy for tomorrow?' He said 'No. I'm gonna f*** you up.' I was like 'F***. OK. If you wanna fight, then let's fight.' After that we banged like crazy. When I say crazy, I mean crazy. We were throwing until we literally had no energy left. No one was trying to come into that cage and stop us when we were sparring. It was like a remake of PRIDE. We fought for 10 minutes straight. We were hitting each other like crazy. It wasn't like we would slow down or pull up. We went full speed and full power the entire time. After that we were tired. We were saying that we didn't need to go that hard in sparring anymore. We didn't need to prove anything else."

"That's one of the best training memories I have of Rampage."