Gabriel Iglesias was in the throes of an existential crisis or, in his words, “bummed out.”
“I was kind of thinking to myself, ‘What do we do now?’” recalls the comedian, known to fans as “Fluffy.” “Are we done? Have we jumped the shark? Should we call it a day?”
The problem was not a catastrophic failure, but an enormous success.
Captured in the Netflix special “Stadium Fluffy: Live From Los Angeles,” Iglesias’ performance is packed with his signature stand-up — touching on everything from COVID, cockroaches and cancel culture, to his beloved pet Chihuahuas — interspersed with moments of gratitude and awe. At one point in the special, he pauses to take a smartphone photo of a blimp hovering in the distance, which is flashing his name and image, and enthuses, “This is like a birthday and Christmas and the Super Bowl and the World Series and losing my virginity all at the same time.”
But after the dopamine high wears off, one is inevitably left — literally or figuratively — singing “Is That All There Is?”
“I still feel young enough to keep doing standup. I still feel relevant. But I don’t know that I can do something like this again,” says Iglesias, who paid a reported $250,000 in penalties and overtime fees for going over his contracted time slot, violating Dodger Stadium’s curfew rules. “So, the question was, can I find something big to do? What’s going to be the next thing?”
The answer came in February 2024, when Iglesias surprised the crowd at the Kia Forum in Inglewood, just south of downtown L.A., by appearing onstage to present comedian Jo Koy with a plaque honoring him for his record sixth sold-out show at the venue. Iglesias suggested they do a show together “across the street” at SoFi Stadium, and the audience erupted.
It wasn’t just an idle comment on Iglesias’ part, but it took a lot of sweat and toil to make the idea a reality. First, Iglesias had to sell Koy on the concept.
“He was like, ‘I don’t know, Gabe,’” recalls Iglesias. “And I’m like, ‘Oh, come on. How many freaking sold-out Forums are you going to keep doing?’”
SoFi’s 70,000-seat capacity is roughly the equivalent of four sold-out Forums, and when Koy saw the seating chart up on the wall during an initial meeting with the venue’s management, he was discouraged by the prospect of selling those seats, as well as the upfront costs they’d have to incur. But Iglesias argued that, with their sales records and overlapping fan bases, the math would all work out.
In the end, “I bullied Jo into doing it,” laughs Iglesias.
Once Koy was fully committed, the real work began. It took a year of planning to make the show — scheduled for March 21 — a reality. They made sure to give themselves plenty of time to sell those seats. Pre-sales began on April 23, 2025, and their fears were quickly assuaged when 70% of the tickets sold in a matter of days. It is now a sellout.
Billed as “One Night Only,” the show will not be televised, and they’re doing their best to make sure it’s a unique experience for those in attendance, from the introductory video and the surprise special guests to the stage they perform on, which will be three times bigger than at their regular shows.
“They’re at a stadium, so it’s got to be larger than just the bill, and the bill obviously is crazy — me and him together on one card,” says Koy. “So we put a lot of money into that stage, and it’s massive. The amount of screens is ridiculous. But we want everyone to see it, we want everyone to feel it.”
At the moment, nobody is feeling it more than Koy. The SoFi gig is a full-circle moment for the comic. Born at Misawa Air Base in Japan to an American Air Force master sergeant father and a Filipina mother, he spent more than five years of his childhood in the Philippines, eventually settling in Washington state with his mother and stepfather, who was also in the military. Looking to jump-start the standup career he launched after dropping out of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Koy began driving from Sin City to Los Angeles to perform at open mic nights, but the strain of the 10-hour round-trips became too much, and he decided to pick up stakes and move. But instead of finding an apartment in Hollywood, Santa Monica or another industry-adjacent locale, he set up house south of L.A. proper and found a job at Nordstrom Rack in Culver City.
“I lived in that area, and I remember driving past the Forum and just thinking to myself, ‘Someday,’” recalls Koy. “But to be able to play SoFi … It’s the biggest venue in L.A. This is going to be the most special moment of both of our careers. When we went there two weeks ago to do a photo shoot, we just hugged each other and said, ‘Wow, this is crazy.’”
Iglesias’ ties to the area are even stronger. Born in San Diego, the youngest of six children in a Mexican American family, he moved frequently around various Southern California cities, including Riverside, Corona, Santa Ana, Baldwin Park and Compton, before finally settling in affordable housing in Long Beach, where he was raised by his single mother after his mariachi musician father dropped out of the picture.
Iglesias launched his comedy career in the bar of Long Beach’s Golden Sails Hotel in 1997, when he spontaneously stepped onstage to fill in after the night’s emcee failed to show. Before long, he had quit his job in mobile phone sales to commit to comedy full-time. In the short term, the decision was financially catastrophic — leading to eviction, couch surfing and car repossession — but within three years, he was able to support himself with his stand-up. In 2003, he scored his first TV special, headlining an installment of “Comedy Central Presents.” Three years later, he landed a spot on “Last Comic Standing.” He was disqualified for smuggling in a BlackBerry to send emails to his family, but he made it into the late rounds of the show, giving him weeks of consistent national exposure that put his career into high gear.
The pair have known each other for more than two decades or, as Iglesias likes to say, “since we both had hair.” They became friends after meeting at the Laugh Factory on Sunset Boulevard in 2004, and before long, Iglesias had invited Koy to go on the road with him. Koy turned him down, in part because his son, Joseph Jr., was a year old at the time. But that wasn’t the key reason.
“It was like, man, I want to get out there and be a headliner on my own,” recalls Koy. “To this day, he says, ‘Remember when I was going to take you on the road and you said no? How dare you?!’”
Other than their bald heads, the two are physically dissimilar. Trim with Filipino tribal tattoos running up his arms, Koy tends to dress in black, while Iglesias — whose size has been fodder for both his comedy and his image (“I’m not fat. I’m fluffy.”) — favors baggy shorts and shirts with bold colorful designs, including one he wore for his stadium show dotted with images of Funko Pop Fluffy figurines sporting Dodger gear.
But they have a lot in common comedically, including formative influences like Eddie Murphy. More significantly, both draw heavily on family and cultural identity in their material. Iglesias made frequent references to his Mexican American mother, Esther. in his act prior to her passing in 2012, and Koy’s mother, Josie, still makes regular appearances in his routines.
Koy has received backlash for what some regard as his exaggerated portrayal of his mom’s high-pitched Filipino accent and cultural quirks, but he argues that the stories are real, the voice is spot-on and, more importantly, they have a universal appeal.
“It has nothing to do with ethnicity. It has nothing to do with color. It has nothing to do with anything other than my mom is a mom, and this is how she raised me,” says Koy. “There’s nothing better than Martin Lawrence telling me, ‘Oh, my God, my mom is just like your mom.’”
Lawrence was one of the stars on hand — along with Iglesias, Tisha Campbell, Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds, Taboo from the Black Eyed Peas and others — when Koy was immortalized with a hand and footprint ceremony at the TCL Chinese Theatre on Feb. 12.
“It was a surreal moment,” marvels Koy, who, during his speech, recalled visiting the Chinese Theatre as a kid and putting his hands in Murphy’s handprints. “When I was at the podium talking about it, I felt my life flashing before my eyes in a matter of seconds. I went back to being a kid doing that.”
“Surreal” is also the word Iglesias uses to describe his recent landmark Hollywood moment, receiving a star on the Walk of Fame on March 3.
“I’m honored, but I don’t feel worthy of it because, in my head, these are for movie stars and Academy Award winners, somebody that’s done multiple films and stuff like that,” says Iglesias.
You can call it false modesty, but it’s revealing that the multimillion-dollar automobile collection Iglesias maintains in his 14,404-sq.-ft. warehouse-turned-clubhouse in Long Beach-adjacent Signal Hill is dominated by various models of the humble Volkswagen microbus — some 30 of them — rather than Porsches or Ferraris.
But there’s no denying that both Iglesias and Koy are hugely successful. On the year-end Billboard Boxscore chart for top-grossing comedy tours of 2025, Iglesias was ranked No. 4, earning $35.3 million from 100 shows, while Koy came in at No. 8 with $20.9 million from 83 shows. And that’s just one year of many for the two veteran performers. The numbers are all the more impressive when one considers the low overhead for touring comics relative to musical acts and other large live productions, which require exponentially more people and equipment, onstage and off.
Both have also done a string of Netflix standup specials, lent their voices to numerous animated projects (e.g., Iglesias as Speedy Gonzalez in 2021’s “Space Jam: A New Legacy”) and acted in live action projects — from Iglesias’ three-season stint on the Netflix sitcom “Mr. Iglesias” (2019-2020) to Koy’s leading role in the semi-autobiographical comedy feature
“Easter Sunday” (2022).
Of course, there are downsides to being in the spotlight. In 2024, Koy agreed to step in at the last minute to host the 81st Golden Globes, and was rewarded with a cold reception in the room. (“Yo, I got the gig 10 days ago. You want a perfect monologue? Shut up,” he snapped at one point.) It was some of worst reviews of his life.
And last October, both he and Iglesias were part of a contingent of comedians lambasted on social media for taking big paychecks to perform at the Riyadh Comedy Festival in Saudi Arabia, despite the country’s well-documented human rights abuses and the content restrictions it placed on their routines.
“There are some places that are a little bit more selective, Saudi Arabia being one of those places,” says Iglesias, who first performed there in 2012. “I’m willing to play by the rules when I do a corporate event here in America. Don’t make fun of Google. Don’t talk about the CEO. Don’t talk shit about his shoes. Don’t make fun of his wife. There’s always rules no matter where you go.”
When Iglesias played Dodger Stadium, he learned a few rules that will serve both of them at the SoFi gig, particularly regarding the time it takes the sound of the crowd’s reaction to reach the stage.
After his performance on the first night, “a friend who’s a comic goes, ‘Dude, you waited too long [for the laughs],’” recalls Iglesias. “So, the next night, I went out there and performed at my normal speed.”
As a stadium novice, Koy is less sure about how to calibrate his performance.
“A theater is a comedy club on steroids, but it’s still intimate,” he observes. “Arenas are like five theaters, and you’ve got to keep that pace up and maintain that energy. A stadium …? Bro, I don’t know what to think.”
English (US) ·