While "The Ultimate Fighter 10" showcased a pair of rival coaches, the root of Quinton "Rampage" Jackson's beef with Rashad Evans stretches back almost six years.

After 11 months of verbal warfare, the rivals face off May 29 at UFC 114 in what's become the most heated rivalry in the promotion's history, according to UFC president Dana White.

MMA fans' first peek at the rift came when the two went nose-to-nose in the cage at UFC 96 after Jackson's decision victory against Keith Jardine, Evans' teammate. But the seeds of discontent were sown in middle-of-nowhere Colusa, Calif.

Jackson, then a PRIDE star just a few weeks shy of his 26th birthday, cornered Hector Ramirez, his teammate under trainer Colin Oyama, for a June 2004 fight against Evans at Gladiator Challenge 27.

The two-day event featured eight-man tournaments at light heavyweight and heavyweight. Ramirez won his first-round fight the night before by first round TKO. It took his team eight hours to drive up from Orange County to Colusa.

Ramirez, a former wrestler, tore all the ligaments in his right ankle in the first round against Evans. He had little option but to stand and trade punches. A ground battle wasn't really what he wanted anyway; Evans, who then trained with UFC legend Dan Severn, was a collegiate wrestling standout.

Ramirez sat on the stool after the first round and told Jackson his ankle was shot. Jackson asked him if he wanted to stop the fight. Hell no, Ramirez said. I didn't drive all the way out here to stop a fight.

With his ankle swelling by the minute, Ramirez was flat footed and couldn't do much other than throw an occasional bomb. Evans pressured him early, then stood at range and boxed. Ramirez kept throwing, but he missed most of his punches. Jackson screamed at him from outside the cage: "You're losing the fight!"

As time slipped away, Evans started to play with Ramirez. He put his arms to his sides, sauntered into range, and showboated. His punches were backed by both legs and he landed almost at will. Ramirez kept looking for the knockout on his one leg.

The judges awarded Evans a unanimous decision victory after two five-minute rounds. He threw his hands up in victory at the announcement. It was Ramirez's first professional loss.

"[Evans] was kind of a cocky guy," Ramirez told MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com).

Jackson was irritated with the display. It wasn't a fair fight.

"Rashad was still dancing around playing with his nipples back then with them little tight shorts on acting like he was doing something," he told MMAjunkie.com Tuesday during a conference call promoting UFC 114.

Evans didn't make things better afterward. He idolized Jackson and approached him after the fight. But he forgot – or ignored – Jackson's bond with Ramirez.

"He came asking me, 'Hey, man, I want to come train with you,'" Jackson said. "I thought it was real disrespectful because he fought my teammate in the tournament and he disrespected him by talking about his wrestling and dancing around. [I said], 'I don't want to train with you, man. You just disrespected my teammate.'"

Evans said he was coming from a good place.

"He was my favorite fighter," Evans said. "He was my dude. He really was one of the dudes, I was like, 'Man, I want to get into fighting.' When he got his ass whooped by Wanderlei (Silva), that kind of crushed me. But still, he was still my dude."

The two went their separate ways. Jackson continued to fight for PRIDE until the promotion folded in March 2007. Evans won the Gladiator Challenge tournament and a spot on "The Ultimate Fighter 2." Both eventually became UFC stars and saw each other here and there at events.

Jackson remembered the slight but didn't pay Evans too much attention.

"I had never thought nothing of him," he said. "I thought he was, you know, a good wrestler and stuff back then but, you know what I'm saying, I just didn't like his style."

Then came UFC 96, and all civility went out the door. Evans had won the light heavyweight title at UFC 92 with a win over Forrest Griffin, who had taken Jackson's title five months prior at UFC 86.

"Everything was cool until he got in my face after the Jardine fight," Jackson said. "He real cocky; [He's] got the belt. He's the man, he's knocked out Chuck (Liddell). Then he knocked out this other fat guy with a head kick, so he feel like he's the man. His head is filling like a hot air balloon. So I come in the cage and I just did my job and fight his teammate, and he was supposed to be the one in the cage.

"Then, I watched the pay-per-view and he commentating on my fight, talking bad about me the whole time I'm fighting. I'm like, this guy's got some nerve. That's when I stopped liking him, right then and there. I didn't want to have nothing to do with him."

The UFC smartly capitalized on the rivalry and installed the pair as coaches on "The Ultimate Fighter 10." It was reality TV gold: Evans and Jackson went nose-to-nose again and again over six weeks on set. If they were in the same room, there was bound to be a verbal altercation. A door was harmed during filming.

Tuesday, the two picked up where they left off and dialed up the rhetoric: Evans accused Jackson of being "a little Sambo," and Jackson questioned Evans' sexuality. It was ugly and completely compelling.

Will the war ever end?

"I'm not saying I'll be like, 'Oh, man, I hate his ass, I'll never like him,'" Evans said today. "If he whoop me, or if I whoop him, I'm sure we'll probably fight again, and I'm sure we'll probably pick up right where we left off. But for the most part, after the fight, we'll probably be cool for a minute."

Jackson is not so optimistic.

"I'm a grown-ass man," he said. "This is a sport to me, this is how I get paid. But this is the first time I'm going to actually going to enjoy beating the hell out of somebody."