There’s trash talk, and then there’s what happened between Garry and Magny that ended up in court documents for Magny’s custody battle.
Ian Garry is set to fight Vicente Luque at UFC 296 on December 16th, but for now he’s in the middle of a crazy cyber-war with MMA fans over his behavior and the alleged behavior of his wife.
It’s a twisted and convoluted tale, with some of the accusations against Ian and Layla being pretty silly. Claims that Layla’s ex-husband lives with the married couple have been roundly debunked. A book written by Layla on ‘How To Be A Sports WAG’ has raised many eyebrows, but don’t support the wild conclusions many fans have jumped too.
But then there’s her panache for directing some of her husband’s more bombastic behavior. For example, Garry says she tried to get him to fight Khamzat Chimaev in an elevator. There’s also video that shows she was the one behind Garry’s infamous Neil Magny mugshot shirt.
All this publicity has stirred up a lot of negative feeling toward Garry, and we’re sure this new quote from Neil Magny about another Garry headgame will only add to that.
Leading into their fight at UFC 292, Neil made a dumb throw-away comment about whupping his kids. Garry took it and made it the cornerstone of his fight promotion. He waged mental warfare with the comment. But for Magny, the situation almost cost him access to his kids in a custody battle.
“I opened my mouth and made a stupid statement, yeah absolutely, and I can hold myself accountable to that,” he said in an interview with Sportskeeda’s James Lynch. “The majority of the people, 99% of the people out there knew what I was getting at and never consider I’d be out there actually hurting my kids. But that in itself had a lot more consequences than just like nonsense at the press conference.”
“There were literally screenshots being taken of headlines saying that I’m a child abuser and I’d do this to my kids and that kind of things. There were screenshots being taken and put into apps and things like that that would be admissible in court, where I’m literally fighting for custody of my children.”
“When it was all said and done, there was something I said that came out very poorly on my end,” he said. “The way [Garry] chose to blow it out of proportion had some pretty significant consequences for me. It was just a lot bigger than just selling a pay-per-view or a fight or anything. It was literally my children’s relationship that was at stake at that point. It wasn’t cool.”
“I can’t sit there and brush it off, there were actually some significant consequences that came from that statement. But at the end of the day all I can do is hold myself accountable for the things that come out of my mouth.”
Fortunately, Magny says he’s now in “a very good place” with his children and his children’s mother “where we can both keep what’s best for the kids as the main priority.” He’s re-shuffled his fight camp so he’s not just showing up to train without a larger plan in motion. And he’ll return on January 20th, 2024 against Mike Malott at UFC 297.
As for Garry, we’ll see whether the internet furor that continues to dog him clears up after his fight next weekend.