Gilbert Burns wants to see Colby Covington vs. Jorge Masvidal next.
The pair have been slated to fight for a while with UFC president Dana White recently revealing that he’s still working on making it happen.
Burns is naturally interested in the matchup as he could end up facing the winner — or loser — depending on the result of his planned welterweight title fight with Kamaru Usman at UFC 258.
And while he believes Masvidal has the better striking, Burns ultimately feels Covington has his number due to this pressure, pace and wrestling.
“Stand up, for sure Masvidal is better, but Colby Covington has that pressure, has that pace,” Burns said on his YouTube channel (via Middle Easy). “I watched a couple videos of these guys going after it in the living room when they lived together, and Colby was just taking him down multiple times.
“The last fights that he faced good grapplers, (Jorge) has lost, Kamaru (Usman) and (Demian) Maia. I think Colby has his number too.
“Colby has good pressure, good pace for that division. I don’t know, they know each other a lot…the way I kind of picture that a little bit, Colby has the advantage, Colby has his number.”
This is a certainly common opinion for most observers in the combat sports world, especially after seeing old videos of Covington and Masvidal wrestling.
That said, Masvidal has definitely improved his overall grappling and showed relatively good takedown defense against Usman in their short-notice fight at UFC 251.
Having added vicious knockouts to his game, it will certainly be interesting to see how Masvidal fares against Covington in 2021.
Do you agree with Burns?