Al Iaquinta was ‘pretty pissed’ at no performance bonus
Al Iaquinta: “I was pretty pissed man I think any other card, a fight like that, coming in and being the underdog, getting a win the way I got it… but, it is what it is.”
UFC Fight Night 55 in Australia set a league record for finishes with 11 out of 11. The UFC gives out four $50,000 performance bonuses, one each for the fighters in the fight of the night, and two others for exceptional fighting. It is too bad that the awards can’t be saved up, and events that are not spectacular lose out on some, so that when an event like UFN 55 comes along, there are more awards to give out than four.
But four it was, and Al Iaquinta, who beat the odds and England’s Ross Pearon in the co-main will have to go back to Long Island without an extra $50,000 that he would have earned on some cards.
Appearing on Ariel Helwani’s The MMA Hour, Iaquinta said he had envisioned the finish.
“It was definitely one of the scenarios that played out in my head,” said Al as transcribed by Chuck Mindenhall for MMAFighting. “I’d think about the fight constantly leading up and I’d go through getting beat up for two rounds and having to come back and win…all these different scenarios, and one of them was definitely going out there and just having a flawless performance. You know, not taking too much damage, just sticking and moving, good footwork, doing everything that we game-planned and went over in practice.
“It was really just like a sparring match. One of our guys, Jonny Bonilla-Bowman, he’s got a style that’s similar, but he puts a lot more pressure on. So this was actually a little bit less stressful of a fight than going through a sparring session with that guy.”
“I was enjoying it I guess, kind of letting the main event take all the attention. It was my first time fighting in such a big – or any kind of – profile fight. So have it a little bit of both ways was good I think. I got to fight in front of the big crowd. [There] wasn’t too much behind it, so I was kind of just doing my own thing.”
Iaquinta got everything but a 50k bonus.
“Yeah, I was pretty pissed man,” he said, “I think any other card, a fight like that, coming in and being the underdog, getting a win the way I got it…but, it is what it is, you know?”