UFC 268: Dustin Jacoby Gambles On Short Notice And Wins, Time Off Comes Next

New York, NY — Stepping in on short notice is never an easy decision, but if it pays off it can pay dividends— as it did for UFC middleweight Dustin Jacoby. Jacoby earned a unanimous decision win over John Allan at UFC 268 at Madison Square Garden on Saturday.

Jacoby (16-5) took the fight against Allan (13-7) on very short notice and was able to make good on being the favorite in the fight.

“Mission accomplished. Extremely happy I was able to get that call,” Jacoby told media outlets including Cageside Press backstage in New York’s Madison Square Garden. “I was in the middle of the mountains around the national forest in northwestern Colorado. No service, a buddy of mine had a little bit of service. My coach called my wife, my wife called his sister, she texts him. We’re sitting around a camp fire, by the grace of God his phone goes off. And I’m not going to lie when he looked over he said ‘I’ve got some news you might want to’, I was drinking a Coors Lite sitting by the camp fire, ‘I’ve got some news, I don’t know how you’re going to feel.’ I was like, ‘What?'”

“He’s like, ‘You got offered a fight next weekend.’ This is Sunday night. I said, ‘No way. No way am I taking that fight.’ And we sat there a minute and my other buddy who’s one of our coaches, he kind of looks over after a couple minutes and is like, ‘You’re not going to call coach?’ I’m like ‘Dude no way I’m getting up and shooting an elk tomorrow.’ And then I got to thinking, we were talking about it, I was going to be here anyway cornering my teammate Jordan Williams who unfortunately just took a loss. I got to thinking I’m going to be here anyway, there’s no way I can be here and still tell the UFC no.”

Now Jacoby is looking to take some time off, and recover to get ready for another busy year in 2022.

“Yeah I think I’ve earned a little bit of time off. Again though this is what I do man. I use my body for my profession. So I’ve got to keep my nose on the grindstone.”

“I’ll still be in the gym helping my teammates keeping myself prepared and then maybe early next year. Spring time? I don’t know. I say that and then I could get a call a couple weeks from now and say yes, who knows?”

Watch the rest of the UFC 268 post-fight media scrum with Dustin Jacoby above. More coverage from the event can be found below.