Why Ragin’ Al is fine with not fighting Gaethje on Saturday night

Al Iaquinta was supposed to fight Justin Gaethje on Saturday at UFC Fight Night 135 on Saturday in Lincoln, Nebraska. However, Iaquinta decided instead to rest the shoulder he injured fighting Khabib Nurmagomedov for $250,000 on one day’s notice, so it will be James Vick out there in the main event. Fighters don’t get paid unless they are fighting, so were Iaquinta an ordinary fighter, Saturday would be miserable. But he’s not – he has a day job selling real estate.

On balance, Iaquinta is pretty happy with the way things turned out.

In the time that I would have trained for that fight, I made as much money selling real estate, said Iaquinta to Marc Raimondi for MMA Fighting. So, it’s not a money thing. I enjoyed my summer. I wasn’t going to bed injured every night, I wasn’t waking up with a sore neck. I didn’t have to worry about Justin Gaethje’s crazy ass. I’m doing what I want to do. If they made it worth it for me, I would have. I’m making my show money in that amount of time when these deals close out. It’s crazy that a real estate agent on Long Island can make their show money for headlining a five-round fight against a top-six, top-seven guy in the world.

The rest of the fighters … they all would have taken it and they would have had to push through the injury. I was like, you know what? F*** this. I’m gonna make just as much money walking around, meeting people selling real estate. I’m making great connections with people like me — my kind of people. It’s a beautiful thing.”

I’ve wanted to fight forever, but it’s not gonna be at my expense. It’s gonna have to be an asset for me to fight.

I’m training, I’m having fun in the gym. I’m training when I want to train. I’m getting better when I want to get better. I don’t have to do anything. Am I missing out on opportunities? Maybe. It’s too much stress. I’m having fun with my life now. I’ve given up on the UFC getting behind me. So I’m just getting behind myself.