New York, NY — Welcoming the returning “Ragin'” Al Iaquinta to the octagon at UFC 268 will be lightweight veteran Bobby Green.
The pair were booked once before, in 2015. Green (27-12-1) was forced out of that fight due to injury, but down the line asked Iaquinta if they could run it back some day. “He held up to his word, he took the fight,” Green noted during Wednesday’s UFC 268 media day.
Curiously, while he was young and admittedly “crazy” back then, Green noted that Iaquinta is actually the one doing the talking ahead of this fight. “I just want to see what we learned from each other, since our last run-in. And I felt like I was a young, stupid kid at that time.”
“I was kind of crazy at that time, and one thing I learned, whatever you say, you’ve got to back that sh*t up,” Green continued. “I think Al thought that I was going to be that same crazy kid, and I was going to be talking sh*t and doing wild sh*t, so he kind of beat me to it, and he got to saying some sh*t about ‘flawless victory.'”
That, observed Green, was a reference to Mortal Kombat. Maybe not a good idea, either. “That sh*t’s a game. That’s a game, this is real life, and now you’ve got to back that sh*t up, that you think you’re going to go in there and not get touched. Everybody gets touched by me. And they get touched a lot.”
“Now you dug your grave with your tongue. You gotta go back that sh*t up.”
There’s a reason why the UFC hasn’t let him go after all these years, Green later stated: the promotion likes his work. And there’s no pressure to get the win despite losing his last two. “Absolutely not. I don’t give a f*ck. I don’t. I’m being straight up with you. This is just a journey, this is a freakin’ blessing to be here. I just put my heart into every time I do it. If you like it you like it, if you don’t, you don’t, f*ck you too. I really don’t give a sh*t. I just do me, and I try to do it the best I can. I try to inspire people, uplift people.”
Watch the full UFC 268 media day appearance from Bobby Green above. More coverage of the event can be found below. UFC 268 takes place Saturday, November 6 at Madison Square Garden in New York, NY.