Covington suspects it was comedian and podcaster Bob Menery that sent Jorge Masvidal their location, resulting in ‘Choas’ getting jumped outside a Miami Beach steakhouse.
Colby Covington returned to the public eye over UFC 286 weekend, and while he had a lot to say about Khamzat Chimaev and Leon Edwards and Kamaru Usman, he didn’t bring up the alleged assault he suffered at the hands of Jorge Masvidal in March 2021.
That’s because there’s still a legal and civil case active over the incident, which saw Masvidal jump Covington outside of a Miami Beach steakhouse.
How Masvidal tracked “Chaos” down that night is still an issue of contention. Covington had just finished doing a Full Send podcast with Dana White’s favorite YouTube pranksters, the Nelk Boys. One of the show’s co-hosts, comedian Bob Menery, made an Instagram post with Colby tagging Papi’s Steakhouse as the location.
Whoops.
Jorge Masvidal would show up later that night to take revenge on Covington for talking about his children. He claimed the confrontation amounted to ‘mutual combat,’ and we’ll see what the Florida court system does with that when the case is finally adjudicated sometime later this year.
During UFC 286, Covington sat down with the media and was asked about Menery’s role in the incident.
“I don’t have a relationship with Bob Menery,” Covington said. “The only reason that I had met that guy was through the Nelk Boys, through Kyle and those guys, because I was doing the podcast with those guys. So of course I was hanging around the Nelk Boys and those guys, and I don’t know what to believe with that guy, I think he set me up with what happened, but I’ll let that work out the way it does.”
“I ran into him ironically at the Super Bowl, he was there trying to get a picture, I was like ‘Nah, I ain’t taking a picture, we aren’t friends. We never were friends.’ So … I just think he’s a fake guy and, uh, no relationship.”
That quote quickly made its way across the Influencer space and Menery (who was kicked off the Full Send podcast shortly after the incident) responded to one of the many Instagram videos.
“Anything for clicks. I already addressed this,” he wrote. “Hopefully Kyle and nelk boys one day realize how much this joke f—ed my shit up. Really disgusting act by them. Sad to see and absolute bulls—t.”
Menery did explain his role in the incident a month later on another podcast.
“This is what I was saying, I didn’t expect — If it was at this level and I knew the fight game was this serious, I would not have posted the location,” he said. “And I’ve learned from that, I’m not going to do that moving forward. I learned my lesson, that’s f—ed up, especially with these fighters.”
“First and foremost, everyone’s giving me s— here … we post everywhere we go. And Colby re-posted us too, that night, two seconds later. So Colby’s story’s showing, people knew we were at Papi Steak, that simple. If I could take it back, absolutely.”
Nelk boy Kyle Forgeard doesn’t buy that, though. He went even further with his own accusation placing the blame solely on Bob.
“Bob Menery actually set Colby up,” he said. “I did see him texting Masvidal while we were at dinner with Colby, so now that I think about it I think something isn’t really adding up.”
“At the end of the day, for people to say ‘I read it on Twitter,’ all that s— bothers me,” Menery said. “Like, oh, the Nelk Boys set him up, let me tell you what. Kyle and all them, they do a lot of pranks and whatnot. When I’m involved, none of that fuckin’ shit happens on my watch. Because my reputation is too important to me and I never want to be tied to that. And that’s why I was so mad that night.”