“Lil Heathen” just won’t go away.
Longtime Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) Lightweight staple-turned Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship (BKFC) brawler Jeremy Stephens once again returns to the octagon to take on fellow veteran King Green in the main card opener of UFC 328 in two months (Sat., May 9, 2026) inside the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey.
Back in early 2022, it seemed like the end of Stephens’ UFC run. After a 15-year tenure and 33 fights, the promotion released him, and for
the next three years, he stayed busy outside the Octagon — competing in Professional Fighters League (PFL) before carving out a successful run in BKFC.
Then, out of nowhere, Stephens made a surprise return for a one-off hometown fight at UFC Des Moines. He dropped a hard-fought, bloody battle to Mason Jones, returned to BKFC for a high-profile bout against Mike Perry… and now, somehow, he’s back again.
This time, it wasn’t luck — it was a phone call.
“After my last UFC, I couldn’t sleep for like three days. Like, I was just up hella early, just stewing in thoughts,” Stephens told Ariel Helwani recently. “So, I had reached out to Dana [White], the man himself, and was just like, ‘Uh, thank you for the opportunity. It was on eight weeks. I’ve been three years deep in becoming the best bare-knuckle fighter that I could be. There’s definitely more to me, and I would love another opportunity in the UFC.”
And, honestly, it tracks.
Stephens has long been considered “Dana’s guy,” with White publicly supporting him for years — even going as far as bailing him out of jail during a 2012 arrest in Iowa.
Still, it’s a rare situation. Stephens is one of the only fighters to bounce between BKFC and the UFC as if nothing changed — and he’s doing it at 39 years old.
The stakes are also very real.
Stephens is currently tied with Clay Guida for the most losses in UFC history (19). One more defeat would give him the record outright — something no fighter wants attached to their name.
But if history has shown anything, it’s this:
“Lil Heathen” isn’t going anywhere quietly
