Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) lightweight up-and-comer Al Iaquinta scored a bookie-busting technical knockout win over Ross Pearson at the UFC Fight Night 55: "Rockhold vs. Bisping" mixed martial arts (MMA) event last Friday night (Nov. 7, 2014) in Sydney, Australia.
Good enough to earn "Raging Al" a post-fight bonus?
Hardly. But that's what happens when you compete on a fight card that features 11 bouts -- and 11 finishes. And as Iaquinta told The MMA Hour (via MMA Fighting), he's still pretty pissed, but there isn't much he can do about it with only three bonuses to go around.
"I was enjoying it I guess, kind of letting the main event take all the attention," he said. "It was my first time fighting in such a big -- or any kind of -- profile fight. So have it a little bit of both ways was good I think. I got to fight in front of the big crowd. [There] wasn't too much behind it, so I was kind of just doing my own thing."
What did bother Iaquinta was the fact that he pulled off an upset, in fairly spectacular fashion, and it still wasn't good enough for an end-of-the-night bonus. Not with the kinds of finishes going on in Sydney.
"Yeah, I was pretty pissed man," he said. "I think any other card, a fight like that, coming in and being the underdog, getting a win the way I got it...but, it is what it is, you know?"
For the record, performance bonuses went to Luke Rockhold (submission) and Louis Smolka (knockout), while "Fight of the Night" was awarded to the middleweight bangfest pitting Robert Whittaker against Clint Hester (crunch the numbers here).
He may not be leaving Australia with a post-fight bonus, but Iaquinta will surely be afforded a more prominent opponent his next time out.
Who do you have in mind?