Joaquin Buckley earned his biggest win to date at UFC 307 in Salt Lake City to extend his welterweight winning streak to five. “New Mansa” became just the second man to stop Stephen Thompson with strikes in the UFC after exploding forward in the third round.
Buckley, who has been criticized for his post-fight call outs in the past, had one name in mind that seemed to go down well with the fans and media. He called to face former champion Kamaru Usman who has been inactive since his short notice bout with Khamzat Chimaev at UFC 294 last year.
The #9-ranked contender hasn’t received the response that he would’ve wanted but fortunately for him, he has names other than Usman on his hit list.
In a recent interview with Luke Thomas, Buckley gave his thoughts on the rest of the welterweight top ten where some big fights could be coming soon.
After speaking about the upcoming title fight in his division at UFC 310, the former middleweight weighed in with his take on a potential fight between the undefeated Ian Machado Garry and the former interim champion Colby Covington.
This is a fight that Garry was pushing for heavily at one stage but despite several replies from Covington, never got any closer to happen and as a result, “Chaos” hasn’t fought since his disappointing performance at UFC 296.
Buckley said that due to the name and ranking that Covington still holds at 170-pounds, this is a fight that would interest him if the Usman match-up doesn’t happen. Thomas initially asked “New Mansa” whether in his opinion, Covington is “washed” at 26-years old considering his lack of activity.
“That’s a question for him to answer to but my thing is, the last fight that he had was against Leon Edwards and that was about a year ago now, so time ain’t on nobody’s side. If you really want to show the world what you up to and what you’ve been doing and how you been working, you got to take a fight. I’m happy to find out myself too with Colby Covington if he ain’t got nothing lined up.”
