Al Iaquinta Set to Return, Wants Thiago Alves Fight
Al Iaquinta Set to Return, Wants Thiago Alves Fight
UFC lightweight Al Iaquinta has ended his stand off with the UFC over contract stipulations and will return.
Al Iaquinta hasn’t stepped foot inside the UFC Octagon since April 2015, but with his issues with the UFC now finally ironed out, it appears we could be seeing the man from Long Island back in there sooner rather than later.
Cornering his teammate Aljamain Sterling at UFC on Fox 23 in Denver, Colorado this weekend, Iaquinta and his coaches Ray Longo and Matt Serra appear to have met with UFC matchmaker Sean Shelby. Judging by a picture posted by Shelby in the early hours of Friday morning, Iaquinta will be back very soon.
[tweet url="https://twitter.com/seanshelby/status/824884216995328000" hide_media="0" hide_thread="1"]
The post came after Iaquinta’s appearance on Submission Radio earlier in the week. There he suggested that his break was more down to needing a break rather than any long-term dispute with the promotion.
“I don’t even know if it’s that I was fighting for what I believe in,” Iaquinta said. “I was hurting, my body was hurting a lot, I was not getting paid a lot, I got hurt. I felt like I was kind of hung out dry for a little bit. So I took a little break and see, you know, maybe the Real Estate thing is what I want to do, maybe it’s not. It’s just… it’s tough.
“It’s not like I took a stand. And a lot of people made it that and I guess maybe I was kind of doing it, but I just really didn’t feel like fighting in New York in November for what the conditions were, for the guy that I was fighting, for the amount of money I was fighting for, the amount of money that that event was bringing in just didn’t feel right to me.
“It didn’t make sense to me to fight for what I was going to fight for, so I asked them if we could talk about renegotiating something and I basically got cursed out. So yeah, I just went on, did my own thing and that’s it. They’re running a business, I’m running a business. That’s all it is. I gotta look out for my health though. That’s the first thing.”
With Iaquinta now fully healed up and ready to get back in the Octagon, he said he had a few fights on his mind and he’d be willing to take the step up to welterweight to make them happen.
“I think Thiago Alves,” Iaquinta said. “He couldn’t make 155, so I’d be willing to go up to 170 if he just wants to chill out. I’ll go up to 170 and fight him. I think that’d be good, that’d be fun. I wouldn’t have to cut weight. He fought Jim Miller.
“I guess he cut a lot of weight so he didn’t look great. But if he wants to fight at 170, that’d be cool. There’s a lot of fights out there. So we’ll see.”
Cornering his teammate Aljamain Sterling at UFC on Fox 23 in Denver, Colorado this weekend, Iaquinta and his coaches Ray Longo and Matt Serra appear to have met with UFC matchmaker Sean Shelby. Judging by a picture posted by Shelby in the early hours of Friday morning, Iaquinta will be back very soon.
[tweet url="https://twitter.com/seanshelby/status/824884216995328000" hide_media="0" hide_thread="1"]
The post came after Iaquinta’s appearance on Submission Radio earlier in the week. There he suggested that his break was more down to needing a break rather than any long-term dispute with the promotion.
“I don’t even know if it’s that I was fighting for what I believe in,” Iaquinta said. “I was hurting, my body was hurting a lot, I was not getting paid a lot, I got hurt. I felt like I was kind of hung out dry for a little bit. So I took a little break and see, you know, maybe the Real Estate thing is what I want to do, maybe it’s not. It’s just… it’s tough.
“It’s not like I took a stand. And a lot of people made it that and I guess maybe I was kind of doing it, but I just really didn’t feel like fighting in New York in November for what the conditions were, for the guy that I was fighting, for the amount of money I was fighting for, the amount of money that that event was bringing in just didn’t feel right to me.
“It didn’t make sense to me to fight for what I was going to fight for, so I asked them if we could talk about renegotiating something and I basically got cursed out. So yeah, I just went on, did my own thing and that’s it. They’re running a business, I’m running a business. That’s all it is. I gotta look out for my health though. That’s the first thing.”
With Iaquinta now fully healed up and ready to get back in the Octagon, he said he had a few fights on his mind and he’d be willing to take the step up to welterweight to make them happen.
“I think Thiago Alves,” Iaquinta said. “He couldn’t make 155, so I’d be willing to go up to 170 if he just wants to chill out. I’ll go up to 170 and fight him. I think that’d be good, that’d be fun. I wouldn’t have to cut weight. He fought Jim Miller.
“I guess he cut a lot of weight so he didn’t look great. But if he wants to fight at 170, that’d be cool. There’s a lot of fights out there. So we’ll see.”