“It’s been wedding season,” laughs Billy Q, who got married to Brianna in March, celebrated the nuptials of teammate and fellow UFC fighter Matt Frevola in September, then followed it up with a trip to Tennessee to watch another Matt, this one his childhood friend, tie the knot in October.
“I think it’s gonna be over for a while, hopefully, unless my wife surprises me with a couple,” he laughs. “But I think it’s gonna be a while. So back to work we go.”
Back to work, indeed. Quarantillo did get in one fight this year thus far, picking up a Fight of the Night bonus for his July stoppage of Gabriel Benitez, but the real action picks up on Saturday when he gets a UFC 268 main card assignment against Shane Burgos.
UFC 268 FREE FIGHTS: Namajunas vs Zhang 1 | Gaethje vs Johnson | Zhang vs Jędrzejczyk | Chandler vs Hooker | Covington vs Woodley | Usman vs Covington 1
Yeah, this one should be good. How good? Good enough that on a card featuring rematches pitting Kamaru Usman against Colby Covington and Rose Namajunas against Zhang Weili, as well as an expected to be epic clash between Justin Gaethje and Michael Chandler, many believe Quarantillo-Burgos can steal the show. And if it does, it won’t be because the two played it safe. That’s not in the fighting vocabulary of either featherweight, and that’s good for us, but sometimes family doesn’t necessarily approve. So how is Mrs. Q looking at this fight?
“She knows that every fight I’ve gone into, people are like, ‘Oh, this guy he’s fighting is a killer, this guy’s this, this guy’s that,’” said Quarantillo. “She understands what I’m capable of, so she always has confidence in me. She’s been to pretty much every pro fight I’ve ever had, so she’s seen me win a very high percentage of them. The time I got a flash knockout loss, I wasn’t even really hurt, so I’ve never had to go to the hospital after a fight. I’ve gotten stitches a couple times, so she really doesn’t understand the type of violence that Burgos is capable of, and she hasn’t seen the type of violence I need to bring out to take this guy out.”