LAS VEGAS – King Green seems like he’s the kind of guy who doesn’t say something if he doesn’t mean it.
So when he said fighting Terrance McKinney was a little bit personal, and a lot about teaching a lesson, it was hard to not buy into it. After he put McKinney away with one second left in the opening round at UFC 329, he said they squashed their brief beef and planned to head out into “Sin City” to prove it – together.
And that they did, according to Green’s social media posts after his TKO win at T-Mobile Arena to open the main card Saturday. Green (36-17-1 MMA, 17-12-1 UFC) was given the business by McKinney (18-9 MMA, 8-6 UFC) in the early moments of their fight, and his face showed it afterward. But in the final 30 seconds, he caught McKinney and hurt him, then kept the pressure on to get the stoppage with a second left in the opening frame.
“You’ve got to understand this is at its highest pinnacle,” Green said after the fight. “The emotions are high, but you’ve got to be able to be in the fire. You’ve got to keep the emotions high, but you’ve got to control your emotions at the same time. It’s a weird game that you’ve got to play. So they’re high. I’m looking at him. He’s looking at me. They’re high, and they’re in the fight. … But I’m just so used to the fire and the way it burns. It is what it is.”
Green said in the buildup to the fight that his disappointment with McKinney was in his accepting the bout to begin with. In Green’s eyes, they had a handshake deal in place – and McKinney admitted during fight week that he broke it so he could be part of a fight card headlined by Conor McGregor.
That’s not a good enough reason for Green, who said he’d prefer some solidarity once in a while.
“I’m going to be real: There ain’t too many Black fighters as it is,” Green said. “… I’m trying to show him and teach him something like, ‘Bro, we’re supposed to stick together.’ Irish fighters do it. The Mexican fighters do it. But us as Black folks, where we come from and what we’ve been through is just different. It is what it is.”
Green won for the fourth straight time after a stretch of three rough losses in four fights. But now on the upswing at lightweight, his four-fight streak has been in just the past seven months. After he spoiled Lance Gibson Jr.’s UFC debut just ahead of the holidays last year, he’s rattled off three straight stoppage wins in 2026 – and the finish of McKinney was good for an extra $100,000 performance bonus.
That may have meant Green was buying when he settled things with McKinney and they hit the town.
“I want nothing but good things for him,” Green said. “I’m sorry that we had to do this fight. I told you don’t take the fight, brother. That’s my little bro, and I didn’t want to do this sh*t. I didn’t want to shut his light out. … He did everything right, but I’m unbreakable. My spirit don’t be broken.”
Green said he’d gladly answer a social media callout from Dan Hooker that came in the minutes after he beat McKinney. He surmised that Hooker saw him getting tagged early by McKinney and reckons that’d be a fight he could have some success in. Hooker (24-14 MMA, 14-10 UFC), a 36-year-old from New Zealand, has lost back-to-back fights to Benoit Saint Denis and Arman Tsarukyan.
“I’ve been calling that guy out, and the funny thing, he didn’t say nothing when I was calling him out before,” Green said. “He didn’t say nothing. Now all of a sudden it’s like, ‘Well, he’s popping like that now. Let’s get him.’ I think they see my face and they see this fight, but I was really just warming up. I was just having fun, taking my time. Then he caught me in my eye and I couldn’t see.
“I hope that they’re not taking this fight and looking at it like maybe I’m slowing down. I was warming up. Once I got him off my back, I’m like, ‘All right, now the fight’s actually going to start.’ You didn’t know it, but I was just playing possum, just enjoying this sh*t.”
This article originally appeared on MMA Junkie: King Green: Brief beef squashed with Terrance McKinney after UFC 329
