Newark — After building his career back up in BKFC, Jeremy Stephens returned the the company where he first found fame last May, only to lose a decision against Mason Jones at UFC Des Moines.
One year later, Stephens is back, this time in a fight with a fellow veteran in King Green.
Speaking with media outlets including Cageside Press during the UFC 328 media day, “Lil Heathen” shed some insight on how the booking came together.
“After my last fight, I couldn’t sleep, and I hit up Dana like a day or two later, and I was just like ‘man, give me another opportunity. Give me Mike Chandler, give my somebody my age, somebody that is up there, that has got fights like me, not these young hungry killers on short notice,” revealed Stephens (29-22, 1NC). “Give me somebody and let me just prepare. That was the main thing.”
Regardless of who he trained with, be it one of the greats like Anderson Silva or Georges St-Pierre, Stephens said he had the time to prepare for the Jones fight, and wasn’t making excuses. So instead he asked for a fellow veteran.
“Let me fight someone my age, someone who’s actually down to fight, who’s been in the game, something like that. We asked for those guys.”
After Green’s last performance, Stephens hit up his manager, who asked the UFC for the fight. Now it’s set. And as for how Green has looked of late, “he looks great. Still got spring in his step still, still smooth as sh*t. That’s f*cking awesome. Then you go in and knock out a young, hungry contender. It’s match-ups, it’s timing.”
Stephens, who left the UFC in 2021 then went 1-2 for the PFL, never expected to return, he admitted on Wednesday. “I didn’t even think I’d be back in the UFC with stuff that had kind of happened. With my losing streak, the way I was performing. To pull myself out of bare-knuckle, out of the gutter. You ever see the moving The Ring? Like crawling myself out of the well, hunting people down to get back here.”
“I’m super-grateful, and obviously I’ve got the fans to thank for that because they’re still tuning into my fights, they like what they see,” he added.
Later, he’d suggest that “most people, they get canned from the UFC, they get fat, they f*cking retire, or they lose their mental health. And I’m not even joking, that’s not even funny, that’s just f*cking facts.”
“I have a big brother that’s looking down, Anthony Johnson. I’ve seen him do it, he got outside of UFC, moved up weight classes and he was just banging heads. Next thing you know, he’s banging on the UFC’s door again, they let him back and then he ends up fighting for a title. I kind of kept that inspiration.”
Antony “Rumble” Johnson fought from welterweight to light heavyweight in the UFC, with his first run lasting from 2007 to 2012. Struggles making weight saw him shown the door off a loss, but Johnson went on a tear outside the company, earning six straight victories prior to his return in 2014. In 2015 and again in 2017, he faced Daniel Cormier for the UFC light heavyweight championship. Johnson tragically passed away in 2022 while battling non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis, but it’s clear Stephens is still inspired by “Rumble.”
As for what keeps Jeremy Stephens going after over 60 pro fights in multiple combat sports, it’s the ability “to adapt, to keep a growing mindset, to keep positivity,” he stated. “Even in the negative, to find something positive. I’m probably one of the most positive people you’ll ever meet, come across. I don’t accept ‘no,’ I believe in God, I have such strong faith even when people don’t see it. And then Charles Darwin: It’s not the strongest or the smartest, it’s the person willing to adapt to change.”
“I’m willing to adapt, to grow, to learn, to fail, to be humiliated, to go through sh*t to crawl out of the mud, and get what I feel like is certain in my heart and my mind, and that’s positivity and growing to be better every day.”
Watch the full UFC 328 media day appearance by Jeremy Stephens above.
