Colby Covington continues to blame referee Marc Goddard for calling his fight with Kamaru Usman early.
Covington and Usman battled in a back-and-forth war in their welterweight title fight at UFC 245 in December. However, it was Usman who was able to get the victory after dropping Covington twice in the fifth round.
With Usman landing strikes on a downed Covington, Goddard saw enough as he called an end to the action. Many felt it was a slightly premature stoppage, including “Chaos” who unloaded on Goddard after the fight.
Covington also believes Goddard gave Usman an unfair advantage by giving him time to recover from fake illegal shots earlier on in the fight. He expanded more in a recent appearance on Ariel Helwani’s MMA Show on Monday:
“Let’s talk about the 5th round. I’m beating his a** again,” Covington said. “I’ve won the whole entire fight, the fight’s mine. They’re about to wrap the welterweight championship around my waist. Then all of a sudden, I slip on a banana peel and I’m getting hit in the back of the head. Marc Goddard is seeing this right in front of his face. Go look at the video in the fifth round.
“I’m completely coherent and I cover up the back of my head. And when I cover the back of my head, he calls the fight. I stand right up and protest, ‘what are you doing? Why are you calling the fight? I’m winning the whole entire fight. There’s less than a minute left in the fight.’ You see a foul right in front of your face and you call it. Then when you don’t see a foul in front of your face, you give him time and you throw him a life raft in the river when he’s drowning.
“That’s why he’s named Marc not so Goodard and he shouldn’t be a ref ever again. I feel bad for all the people who ever had to deal with him as a ref. Look at the next week — Frankie Edgar had to die in a fight just because Marc Goddard was trying to do a makeup call because he f*cked it up and did such a bad job in the fight between me and Marty Fakenewsman.”
His feelings towards Goddard aside, Covington feels it’s only right for the UFC to book a rematch between him and Usman. If that doesn’t happen, he believes it’s a corrupt business:
“They need to run this back,” he added.”There’s 10 more rounds in this, Ariel. Everybody knows that — there’s going to be a sequel and there’s going to be a trilogy to this. Marty Fakenewsman is the only one in the world who doesn’t want this fight.
“The people want this fight. I am the people’s champ for a reason and I fight for the people. But Marc not so Goodard robbed the people of a fair fight. He robbed the fight of a fight down the middle. This needs to be ran back and if it’s not run back, it’s a very corrupt business and it’s a fix.”
What do you make of Covington’s comments?