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MMA coach Ray Longo expected Al Iaquinta to receive a little more credit for going five rounds against UFC lightweight champ Khabib Nurmagomedov. Apparently, he was wrong.

Longo was blown away to see betting lines favor Kevin Lee in their rematch this past Saturday at UFC on FOX 31.

“Why you would make Lee the favorite is beyond me,” Longo on Wednesday told MMAjunkie Radio.

In the end, Longo’s belief in Iaqunita (14-4-1 MMA, 9-3 UFC) proved justified. Iaquinta defeated Lee (17-4 MMA, 10-4 UFC), who was as high as a 4-1 favorite, en route to a unanimous decision.

Despite a 2014 loss to Iaquinta, Lee came into this past Saturday’s fight riding a strong wave of momentum from a decision over Edson Barboza in his previous fight. But Longo discounted the strength of that win based on Barboza’s previous showing, a brutal decision loss to Nurmagomedov.

“Kevin Lee does not do that to Barboza if Barboza wasn’t just rolled by a grizzly bear for three rounds,” Longo said.

But where the Nurmagomedov fight sapped the Brazilian striking specialist, who savaged Dan Hooker (17-8 MMA, 7-4 UFC) in UFC on FOX 31’s co-headliner, it set the stage for Iaquinta.

“I think it gave him the confidence that, if he can go five rounds with a guy like that, and now he’s going to train for five rounds, his cardio would be off the charts,” Longo said. “And it really was.

“I really took that Khabib fight as a huge plus. I didn’t take one negative thought out of that fight. I really don’t believe people can really grasp what was happening there. He was not training for a five-round fight. He didn’t do any wrestling for that fight; he was training for Paul Felder. To take a fight on 24 hours’ notice that a lot of guys turned down is just a win. I didn’t really care what happened. You saw what he did in a short period of time, and I don’t think people gave him credit.”

That might not be the case after this past Saturday’s fight. Iaquinta just beat a former interim title challenger. His overall record stands at 9-3 in the lightweight division. And he’s making it all happen with a day job in real estate.

One might wonder how Iaquinta would do if he focused on fighting full-time, but Longo said you’d see the same fighter in the cage.

“Real estate’s the kind of thing you can pick your own hours,” Longo said. “We don’t have a set schedule when we’re training. We could train Saturday night at 11 o’clock. He gets the same training whether he’s doing real estate or not. I don’t think it taxes him at all.

“Trust me. With Al, if his body feels good, he’s going to be good. He could always improve, no doubt about it. But the real estate thing will have no effect. I don’t even see him quitting. As a matter of fact, I saw him last night, and he’s going to sell my mother’s house for me.”

For complete coverage of UFC on FOX 31, check out the MMA Events section of the site.