Colby Covington feels he has a strong handle on why the door is now closed on his recently rumored fight against Jorge Masvidal.
A fight between former friends Colby Covington and Jorge Masvidal had been in the works for weeks. Dana White himself confirmed that this was the fight the UFC wanted, and Covington was campaigning hard for the fight as well. Masvidal remained quiet throughout the entire process, and now it appears likely that his next fight will be a rematch against Kamaru Usman for the welterweight championship instead.
Colby Covington Shares Why Masvidal Fight Fell Apart
Colby Covington vented his frustrations while the negotiations were dragging between himself and Masvidal, and now that the fight appears to have completely falling through, he is now going scorched earth on his former pal.
“He’s just scared of me. He’s afraid,” Covington said in a recent interview with Submission Underground. “He doesn’t’ want to get embarrassed in front of the whole world. He knows how this matchup goes. He’d be willing to lose to anybody else but me.”
It is rare that Covington campaigns so hard for a fight that is not for a world title. But the outspoken conservative believes that his fight against Masvidal was needed to settle a score and provide an opportunity for Masvidal to back up his big talk. Ultimately, Covington believes that not even a $1 million-plus payday could persuade Masvidal to endure the humiliation that “Chaos” believes was a certainty.
“So the UFC offered him a seven-figure payday, an Ultimate Fighter gig, this heated rivalry….the only reason I wanted to fight Jorge “Street Judas” Masvidal, we got a vendetta, and it needs to be settled,” Covington said.
“And it’s an easy payday for me, and I was willing to go back, but it’s because of the way he was running his mouth. He was saying I was fragile. He was saying he was gonna knock me out. He was saying he was gonna baptize me to close people to me, saying let’s fight in the parking lot of our old gym, let’s fight in the parking lot in publics, trying to act tough at events in front of Dana, like, ‘Hey, I’ll beat Colby’s ass, this and that.’
“So that’s the only reason I was willing to go backwards because there’s a legitimate personal beef there. This is deeper than just a fight. This is a broken friendship, a complete rivalry now. But what can I do about it? He doesn’t want to fight. He’s scared to fight. He knows what would happen if we fight. So I gotta move on. I got bigger business to take care of.”
It is unclear what this business could be unless Covington expects his next fight to be for the title. Covington implied as much in this interview, but it’s difficult to understand how he came to this conclusion after turning down a fight against Leon Edwards that Dana White ensured would have been a #1-contender fight.
Now, Edwards will face Belal Muhammad instead, and a victory would almost certainly put him in the front of the line to challenge Usman next. Time will tell what Covington’s next move will be, but whenever the news drops, you can be sure that Covington will tell the world all about it in his own boisterous way.
Do you believe Colby Covington’s explanation of why his fight with Jorge Masvidal fell apart?
