How Jalin Turner got his nickname
I still live with my mom to this day — $#!@, the UFC about to take me out of there though — but I actually had about 50 babies get out and they were, like, all over the house, and she flipped the f@$% out.
6′ 3″, 23-year-old lightweight Contender Series alum Jalin Turner spoke recently with Shaun Al-Shatti for MMA Fighting, ahead of his fight Saturday night at UFC 229 vs. Vicente Luque, and explained how he got his nickname.
I actually own tarantulas, said Turner, who makes his Octagon debut in a welterweight contest against Vicente Luque at UFC 229. I started getting creeped out by spiders. And I was like, ‘You know what, let me conquer this fear. I’m going to get a tarantula as a pet.’ Got one, started holding it. It was so cool. It just interested me, like, the way they interact, the way they move, the way they kill their prey. Everything. And there’s so many different species. Like, there’s so many different species. You can’t list — it’s almost impossible to have them all. It’s kinda like Pokemon.
I have a little collection going on right now. I used to have upwards of 200 at one point in my life. I had a bunch of babies, I had adults. I kept them in a small container. They don’t need a lot of room. Just shelves with a bunch of little containers, like little critter keepers and all kind of stuff for them.
I still live with my mom to this day — s***, the UFC about to take me out of there though — but I actually had about 50 babies get out and they were, like, all over the house, and she flipped the f*** out. She was like, ‘I’m killing all of them. You’re about to get rid of everything.’
Turner didn’t. But it does make one wonder about being single, and having 200 tarantulas, at home, that get out.
When I was single, it was kind of hard, he said, grinning. But now I’ve got Mrs. Tarantula with me, and she supports them, she likes them. She actually has one of her own. My fiancee loves them.
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