Since their respective knockout wins on the main card of the UFC’s latest trip to Nashville, “Platinum” Mike Perry and “Ragin’” Al Iaquinta have exchanged some serious heat on Twitter. Despite the fact that they fight at welterweight and lightweight respectively, the two talented fighters seem very down to fight each other.
In a recent interview with BJPenn.com’s Chris Taylor, Mike Perry spoke on this possibility, and assured that a fight with Iaquinta is one that he is indeed interested in.
“Definitely,” he said. “It would definitely be a fight I’d be interested. I mean, he said something on Twitter. He goes ‘fighting the bigger, slower, less experienced guy, he’s begging the UFC for that opportunity.’ But he’s got like two more fights than me as a professional. He’s 13-3 – he’s got more losses too. I don’t know how his losses are. Are they decisions, or did he get TKO’d or did he get submitted? I don’t really care. Al Iaquinta does not want these fuckin’ problems in his life. But, I got four more fights on my contract. It doesn’t matter who the opponent is. So if one of those fights ends up being Al Iaquinta, that’d be a fun night for me.”
Perry then discussed this potential fight itself, and how he sees it going:
“He’s too small for me,” he said. “He’s not fast enough – what’s he talking about ‘bigger and slower’. I’m bigger and stronger and faster than him. My muscles give me the ability to be faster than him. I think it would be a good fight for me against a good boxer. He doesn’t kick enough. I’d kick the shit out of him – and I’ll tell him that too. He better watch out for it.”
“I think that would be an easy fight for me, I’d smash him.”
While this is a fight Mike Perry says he’s interested in, however, he’s not sure it’s one the UFC wants. In fact, he really doesn’t know what the promotion is doing in terms of his career.
“At the end of the day, I don’t know what the UFC is doing, you know what I mean? I just won, and I saw two people who just lost get fights faster than me after a huge win like that. I don’t know what they’re doing. Do they want me to promote on social media like I’m doing where I’m talking this shit, where I’m getting shit promoted? Or you know, we work for WME-IMG, UFC, which is huge promotion companies. I think Cris ‘Cyborg’ [Justino] said something about, like ‘where’s my promotion? Why aren’t you guys promoting me?’ And I feel the same way, like why aren’t you promoting me after that big knockout? I’m trying to do shit on Twitter. Like Thiago Alves called me out, I’d accept that fight. But I don’t know what’s going on behind the closed doors with the managers, what they’re talking about. But I’m sure that because Iaquinta won, they want the right fight for him. Because I won, they want the right fight for me. But then again, it comes down to us both being fighters, and someone’s gotta lose at the end of the day. So just fucking throw us in there and promote the fight.”
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This article first appeared on BJPenn.com on 6/5/2017.