Photo by Josh Hedges/Zuffa LLC/Zuffa LLC via Getty Images
On Saturday night in Newark, New Jersey, Colby Covington smothered Robbie Lawler and blanked him on all three judges’ scorecards to earn dibs on the next UFC welterweight title shot (see the highlights here).
It’s exactly the kind of methodical and (relatively) safe performance you need to put against an animal like Lawler, and Covington stuck with his gameplan over 25 minutes even as the crowd expressed their disapproval multiple times.
Now we’re learning that this simultaneously lackluster yet impressive performance almost never came to be. According to ESPN’s Ariel Helwani, Covington suffered a bad cut just above his eye three weeks before the fight that had doctors telling him to pull out of the fight.
Take a look:
This photo is Colby Covington three weeks ago. An accidental headbutt in training opened a cut that required 16 stitches. He told me a doctor told him he should consider pulling out because of its proximity to his eye. pic.twitter.com/tqCrN2K0fE
— Ariel Helwani (@arielhelwani) August 4, 2019
The injury came from an accidental headbutt and required 16 stitches to shut. And while three weeks is enough time something like that to heal up, it’s also likely to pop right back open the moment someone punches you. Fortunately for Covington, Robbie Lawler didn’t get much of a chance to mark him up because he spent the vast majority of his fight struggling on the canvas.
Now all Covington has to do is wait and heal that injury properly while the UFC decides where it’s going to slot his long awaited full fledged welterweight title shot against champ Kamaru Usman. They’ve already started promoting the thing, for better or worse. We’ll keep you informed when a date is locked up.