Joaquin Buckley thinks Ian Garry’s wife is just as much a part of the UFC as her husband is.
While Garry has had an incredibly successful run inside the Octagon thus far, earning wins over Neil Magny, Geoff Neal, Michael ‘Venom’ Page, and Carlos Prates, much of the attention has been placed on Garry’s marriage to TV personality Layla Anna-Lee.
After it was discovered that Anna-Lee had authored a short book titled How to Be a WAG, rumors started to fly that Garry was nothing more than a third wheel in a throuple that still involved Anna-Lee’s ex-husband Richard Cullen. Adding fuel to the fire was the revelation that Cullen actually lives with Garry and Anna-Lee, and works as the former’s nutritionist.
Everyone from Colby Covington to Sean Strickland took the bait, dubbing Garry a “cuck” and slamming the pair’s unconventional living situation in interviews and on social media.
Recently, Joaquin Buckley found himself caught up in all the drama between Garry and his baby mama after he attempted to confront the Irishman during the UFC Kansas City weigh-ins in April.
“Y’all know I had to pull up on Ian Garry at the weigh-in, talking all that mess in his little interview,” Buckley told Parry Punch. “So, I wait till he gets done—I’m waiting, patient. As soon as I pull up, boom, she bumps right into me. She going to use the baby as a shield, pass him off to him, so I’m like, ‘Alright, I’ll let you have that one.’
“But as soon as I’m about to turn around, she comes over to me, caresses my arm, and says, ‘I’mma see you later on tonight.’ Girl, what the f*ck that mean? I’m trying to see him, not you!”
It looks like Joaquin Buckley pulled up on Ian Machado Garry at the end of the ceremonial weigh ins today and was standing right next to his wife. Garry wouldn’t leave the stage until Buckley left.
pic.twitter.com/vu1rkanBw6
— FULL SEND MMA (@full_send_mma) April 26, 2025
Unlike Covington and Strickland, Buckley never intended to bring Garry’s wife into their budding rivalry, but when Anna-Lee seemingly goes out of her way to be part of the show, there’s going to be some collateral damage.
“No, it wasn’t intentional to mess with this girl or nothing like that, but I seen all the comments that people making,” Buckley continued. “I’m surprised that video went as viral as it did. A lot of people felt like it was disrespectful, a lot of people felt like it was mean. I’m like, look—a lot of people say keep the family out of it, but when you let your family be a part of the business, they a part of the business.
She is just as much a part of the MMA business and the UFC as Ian Garry, bro. When you see Ian Garry, you see her—almost like his manager, exactly right.”
Joaquin Buckley thinks Garry’s more extreme antics were the brain-child of Layla Anna-Lee
Garry and his wife also attracted negative attention ahead of a fight against Geoff Neal that was scheduled to go down in August 2023. In the lead-up to their showdown, Garry put Neal’s mugshot from a 2021 arrest for DWI and intended to sell them.
That alone was going too far in the eyes of many, but after Neal pulled out of the fight and was replaced with Neil Magny, Garry accused ‘Handz of Steel’ of physically abusing his kids, knowing full well that Magny was in the middle of a custody battle with his estranged wife.
Garry’s comments resulted in a flood of headlines on social media, which were then used by opposing attorneys to try and portray Magny as a danger to his own children in court.
Buckley believes all of it was Anna-Lee’s doing.
“Don’t get it twisted—a lot of decisions that he make is based off his girl, right? And you seen with the photos of Geoff Neal, right, putting him on a shirt, putting his mug shot out there, talking about the future,” Buckley said. “You see the conversations that she was like, ‘Oh, it’s terrible, he whoops his kid,’ used to bring that up, babe, right?
“So, he brings that up, and now Neal Magny had lost custody—I heard, at least—of his kids due to that whole procedure they had during their press conference. So, they not innocent. It’s (expletive) if that happened to Neal, you know what I’m saying? They not innocent. They done caused a lot of damage.”
Fortunately, Neal never lost custody of his kids due to Garry and Anna-Lee’s ill-advised accusations. Instead, he was granted 50-50 custody. Still, Neal described the separation and custody battle as one of the most difficult things he’s faced, made all the more frustrating by Garry’s ignorant comments.
Buckley made it clear that he has nothing against Anna-Lee, even going so far as to say she’s a nice person. With that said, ‘New Mansa’ recognizes that while Ian Garry is the star of the show, she’s the one pulling the strings.
“She’s nice, she seems nice—there you go,” Buckley said. “I’m not going to be disrespectful when it come to stuff like that. I’m going to keep it a buck—like, that’s just her nature, that’s who she is. She been a part of this business right before she even got with Ian Garry. Even the smile, right? She know to keep the smile on her face even though she upset at me, she know she don’t like my ass, right? She know to keep that smile because there’s cameras always watching. Media trained, media trained, media trained—thank you. She know what she doing; she a part of the biz.
“Anything that girl do ain’t by accident, I promise you. Even if it was an accident, it (expletive) got them all numbers, so I guess that’s the way to look at it.”
