The always exciting Al Iaquinta brings an intensity that is rarely matched in the UFC’s stacked lightweight division.

The native New Yorker is ready to return to the Octagon after being on the sidelines for a year and a half due to a serious knee injury that had him contemplating hanging up the gloves for good during his rehabilitation. 

What happens in Vegas doesn’t stay in Vegas when face-punching is involved. In our latest installment of gym stories, Iaquinta tells a story of how he spontaneously raged on a tatted up, street fighting tough guy looking to throw hands at a local gym.

“I was in Vegas at Skipper Kelp’s gym.” Iaquinta said. “Some guy walks in off the street. He was like 210 pounds. He looked like a gangster. He was a Puerto Rican guy, all tattooed up. He said he was a boxer. He wanted to do this. He wanted to do that. He wanted to be a pro. They set him up and put him in there with me. I was thirty pounds lighter than he was. I was a little white kid from New York. He probably thought he was going to kill me. I beat him up pretty good.” 

“The guy just walked in, saying he was a pro fighter with a bunch of street fights. I’m like ‘Oh shit. This freaking guy is huge. If he knows how to fight I’m going to look like a jackass.’ The first punch I hit him with was a pretty stiff jab. He must have a weak nose or something. His nose started bleeding right away. There was about ten seconds where he blasted me with punches but I just covered up. I hit him with some liver shots and he got tired. It was game over. I was all over him.”

“Afterwards he came up to me, asking about fighting and stuff. I felt bad because he had no idea what he was walking into. That’s what happens with a lot of guys. They see it on TV and it looks really easy and you get in there thinking you are a tough guy but it’s not the same. You get tired pretty quickly.”

Iaquinta isn’t always the hammer, as even the best of the best end up being the nail from time to time at any high level gym. Iaquinta spends that vast majority of his time training at his home gym, the famous LAW MMA in Garden City, New York. In a bonus gym story he tells of a time when he was put through the ringer by Ray Longo during the coach’s infamous puke drill.  

“That happens every day.” Iaquinta said. “Definitely Ray Longo’s puke drill. He has this drill where you wrestle then you hit pads. You wrestle then you hit pads. There is a fresh guy wrestling you and then you hit pads. Your arms are tired. You are going back and forth. By the end of the three five minute rounds if you don’t puke you know you are in shape.”