Jalin Turner is an American mixed martial artist born on May 18, 1995, in San Bernardino, California, who now fights out of Fontana, California, in the UFC’s lightweight division, according to his official UFC athlete profile. He attended Summit High School in Fontana, where a string of injuries repeatedly kept him off the football, basketball and track teams, and a broken finger even cost him a shot at competing in wrestling despite being considered the most talented athlete on that team.

As a teenager with little money for coaching or equipment, Turner would run, shadow box and use his family’s couch as a makeshift punching bag while he waited for a way into organized combat sports, a detail documented on his Wikipedia biography. He was also arachnophobic as a child and began collecting tarantulas to confront the fear head on, eventually owning around 200 of them by the time he reached the UFC, which is how he earned the ring name “The Tarantula.”

Turner discovered mixed martial arts by watching bouts on television after injuries shut him out of school sports, and he began training in 2013 at Adrenaline MMA in San Bernardino. He turned professional in 2016 at age 21, building an amateur and regional resume that included a California Fight League lightweight title and a Southern California regional championship before signing with the UFC.

He made his promotional debut against Vicente Luque on October 6, 2018, at UFC 229, a fight he lost, and he has said openly that the losses along that early road were part of what forged him into a finisher rather than a decision fighter. His Sherdog fight record shows a professional mark built almost entirely on stoppages, with a brown belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu backing up his striking.

Turner’s career-defining moment came at UFC 276 in July 2022, when he finished Brad Riddell in just 45 seconds, a result that catapulted him into the lightweight top 15 and remains, by Bloody Elbow’s account, the peak of a five-fight UFC winning streak that made him one of the division’s most talked-about finishers. The win also earned him his first Performance of the Night bonus.

He carried that momentum through a run that briefly took him to a career-high No. 9 ranking in the lightweight division in January 2024, trading places with Dan Hooker in the official standings after a stretch in which every one of his UFC victories ended by knockout or submission rather than judges’ scorecards.

On December 2, 2023, Turner accepted a short-notice fight against Bobby Green after Dan Hooker withdrew injured from the original card, then knocked Green out at 2:49 of the first round, a finish covered by theScore and good for a second Performance of the Night bonus. His professional record stands at 16 wins and 9 losses, with every one of his wins coming by stoppage, 12 by knockout and 4 by submission.

His most recent headline result came at UFC 330 in Philadelphia in August 2026, where he needed just 39 seconds to knock out Kaue Fernandes, a finish that made him one of four fighters to collect a $100,000 Performance of the Night bonus that night, as reported by MMA Mania.

Turner’s three-round split-decision loss to Dan Hooker at UFC 290 in July 2023 became one of the most talked-about fights of that year, with Turner landing a head kick in the second round that nearly finished Hooker before Hooker rallied to survive and win on the scorecards. CBS Sports called it a three-round spectacle, and UFC.com later ranked it among its top Fights of the Year for 2023.

That reputation as a fighter who finishes or gets finished, rarely going the distance either way, has followed him through a lightweight division that UFC commentators regularly cite when discussing the most dangerous strikers outside the top five rankings, and it is central to how MMA media frames every one of his fight previews.

Turner fights for Monster Energy, one of the UFC’s marquee sponsor brands, and his sponsorship roster has also included the recovery products company Sweet Sweat and the muscle activation brand Compexo, according to reporting from FirstSportz. Earlier in his career he also carried apparel sponsorship from RVCA Sports and a partnership with a cookie company tied to his fight-week promotions.

These deals are relatively modest by UFC standards, with EssentiallySports estimating his non-fight endorsement income in the thousands of dollars per deal rather than the six or seven-figure sponsorships enjoyed by the sport’s biggest pay-per-view draws, reflecting his standing as a respected finisher rather than a crossover star.

There is no publicly documented company, gym ownership stake or product line that Turner has founded or holds equity in. What is documented is his role as a mentor and training partner at Bloodline Combat Sports, the Southern California gym run by former UFC veteran Cub Swanson, where Turner has trained since reconnecting with Swanson after his 2025 comeback, according to UFC.com.

At 31, Turner has described himself as the most experienced active fighter at that gym, working alongside younger prospects in a coaching-adjacent capacity, though this remains an informal training relationship rather than a business he owns, and no reliable public source lists any separate commercial venture in his name.

No reliable public record documents any real estate, vehicles or other major assets owned by Jalin Turner. Neither his official UFC profile nor the net worth trackers that cover his career list a home, investment property or notable purchase, and Turner himself has not disclosed any such holdings in interviews.

Given that his career has included a full retirement and a return within the space of about nine months, and that his highest documented single-fight purses sit in the low six figures, a cautious reading of his finances suggests his net worth is concentrated in fight earnings and savings rather than in property or other fixed assets, but this is an inference rather than a documented fact.