Al Iaquinta Wants Fight With Tony Ferguson Next

With the Ultimate Fighting Championship announcing an interim title fight between lightweights Dustin Poirier and current featherweight king Max Holloway at UFC 236 in April and the rumored bout between fan favourites Conor McGregor and Donald Cerrone, a number of highly-ranked 155 pounders are left without a fight, including Al Iaquinta and Tony Ferguson.

The lightweight division is arguably the most talent stacked division in the UFC but with current champ Khabib Nurmagomedov sidelined due to suspension for his involvement in the post-UFC 229 brawl, the UFC wanted to keep things moving by announcing an interim belt. Ferguson allegedly declined an offer to fight for the belt and the UFC instead went for Poirier and Holloway.

After that announcement, New York’s Iaquinta has sized up the remaining men in the division and believes a fight between himself and Ferguson should eventuate although he doubts if “El Cucuy” would accept the bout (transcribed via BJPenn.com):

“It’s gotta be Ferguson, that’s the fight it’s gotta be,” Iaquinta told Submission Radio. “There’s no one else. I think that’s what it should be. I doubt he’ll take the fight. I don’t know what his deal is. That guy, I have no idea.

“This is the most thinking I’ve done. Since I heard about the Dustin, Max fight getting made I sent out a few text messages to the matchmakers and said, ‘what are we doing?’ I need like a plan, you know, when you want me to fight, where you want me to fight, kind of like structure the next couple of weeks and months of my life. Because if you’re gonna come to me with like four weeks left and asking me to take a fight, that’s not the way it’s really done. And it started to seem like that’s the way it’s becoming. They’re scrambling for fights, they need fights, fights are falling off, and they have a million cards lined up. Every interim champion is now not an interim champion, they’re fighting above a weight class.

“You know, if you’re a champion, the 135 champion is now gonna be an interim champion at 145, the 145 champion’s gonna be an interim champion at 155,” Iaquinta continued. “So, everyone’s got a real belt, and an interim belt is just like… I don’t know. I think they need some help over there to get back to the old [way]. Obviously, you got to keep progressing, but it’s getting out of control. Now the belts don’t mean anything. The old UFC belt meant something. So, maybe that’s why they created this new belt that just doesn’t mean anything.”