Colby Covington feels he has new challenges ahead of him after defeating heated rival Jorge Masvidal, but if the UFC wants to pair the former teammates up again, Covington would be happy to do it one more time.
Covington earned a dominant unanimous decision win over Masvidal in the main event of UFC 272 earlier this month in Las Vegas. Outside of one judge, “Chaos” swept the scorecards to get back on track following a decision loss to welterweight champ Kamaru Usman at UFC 268.
Since the bout’s conclusion, Masvidal has said that he’d love to fight Covington again, and that he would “see him soon.” According to Covington, that would be just fine with him.
“Yeah, he can get beat up again and get put out unconscious this time,” Covington told MMA Fighting. “That was my worst performance and that was his best performance and he still got starched every single round. If the fans want to see me put his lights out for good — and if we see each other in the streets, he talks too reckless, he’s gonna get beat up there as well. I’ll drop him on the concrete, but the UFC won’t pay his medical bills so hopefully he’ll get another UFC fight.
“I’m open to anything. The biggest and best business that Hunter Campbell and the UFC want to do, I’m ready to do. I’m excited and I’ll be ready. They know how hard I work and how much better I get every single day.”
The build to the fight told the story of a friendship that turned to bitter hatred. Between joint interviews, and the UFC 272 press conference that seemed to go off the rails more often than not, Covington enjoyed the process. In fact, during those exchanges with Masvidal, Covington felt like he already jumped out to an early lead before the fight even started.
“I could see how mad he was because he couldn’t do anything about it,” Covington said. “But at least he tried. He came out and actually tried but he knew he couldn’t do anything about it so he was just pouting like a little kid, trying to interrupt me, not let me talk and get my point across.”
There were two moments in the fight that can be considered contentious. First, in the opening round, Covington landed an accidental eye poke. Masvidal reacted to it, but referee Herb Dean didn’t see it, nor call a stop to the action. “Gamebred” expressed his frustrations with Dean, especially since Covington would eventually land a takedown and, with that, early momentum in the fight.
In Covington’s view, the no-call wouldn’t have changed the result.
“I didn’t feel the poke, I didn’t know that the poke happened,” Covington explained. “I was in the heat of the moment trying to punch this dude’s face off so it didn’t make any impact. We go right up against the cage, we were kind of stuck for a second, and I went into my wrestling. He wasn’t going to stop what I was going to do, he had 25 minutes to try and stop it and he didn’t do it. He was defenseless, he gave up, and he just didn’t want to get finished. That was his big thing was not getting finished, but he still got marked up and almost finished against the cage.
“I outsruck him by double. I beat him striking, I beat him wrestling, I beat him everywhere. The guy is a journeyman like I said, I said all of these things. I said truth about him. He hit lightning in a bottle. He’s a two-pump chump. He doesn’t have cardio like the cardio king. He can’t keep up with the greatest American fighter of all-time. It was an easy night, a flawless victory.”
The other often discussed moment took place in Round 4. During an exchange, Masvidal landed a big shot that looked to have stunned Covington. Admittedly, fatigue played a major factor as to why Masvidal didn’t explode towards additional offense.
Covington says he didn’t get rocked, but he was momentarily off balanced, and went back to finish the round — which all three judges scored in his favor.
With the five-rounds now in the history books, Covington feels that if Masvidal is holding on to that landed punch as a reason for wanting to run it back a second time, the former interim welterweight champion feels that would be a big mistake.
“If he wants to talk about one punch in 25 minutes, OK, let’s talk about what happened at the end of the 25 minutes,” Covington said. “Did you not see that guy hanging on the f****** security guards? He, literally, can’t even walk because he’s so exhausted, and he’s still flipping out, ‘F*** you, Colby, I’m gonna get you.’ C’mon bro. The dude can’t even speak. He can’t even walk, he’s got people holding him up. I’m there, I’m fresh, like I didn’t even get in a 25-minute fight.
“Imagine if someone isn’t pulling me off of him. Imagine if we were in the streets: I’m literally taking his life, his life is over in that moment. He knows his soul got taken, that his life is over, and the ‘King of Miami’ is here.”
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