Al Iaquinta details the special rule the UFC named after him
If you’ve stayed up to date with the UFC over the last couple of years, you’ve probably noticed there has been a little less swearing in fighters’ post-fight interviews. That’s because UFC fighters are diligently following the “Al Iaquinta Rule.”
This rule was put into place shortly after its namesake Al Iaquinta unleashed a profanity-laced tired in one of his post-fight interviews, and apparently, UFC fighters are reminded of it before every card.
“They have a rule now about me. You can’t curse on the mic. So that’s pretty cool,” Iaquinta revealed on Submission Radio (h/t MMA News). “After the weigh-ins, they do a meeting backstage. And they always bring me up and they say, no matter what happens, you can’t curse on the mic. It’s the Al Iaquinta Rule. So I’m in the history books.”
Iaquinta says he had heard about this rule for some time before actually encountering it himself shortly before he beat Kevin Lee in December.
“I heard about it forever,” Iaquinta said. “Everyone kept telling me about it. And then finally, I fought Kevin Lee in the last FOX show, and Dana comes in the back and he goes, ‘I always give this speech, but now he’s actually here.’ And we talked about the Al Iaquinta Rule, and it was great.
“But I was glad that I finally got to hear the rule myself in person. That was good.”
Clearly, this is a point of pride for Al Iaquinta. In fact, he says he would have amped up the cussing on that fateful day had he known it would later inspire a piece of UFC policy.
“If I could do it again I would have went twice as hard that day,” he said.
This article first appeared on BJPENN.COM on 5/3/2019.
