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Sounds like Colby Covington is just as happy not fighting former friend Jorge Masvidal as Masvidal is to not fight him.
Usually when two former teammates don’t want to fight one another it’s because facing a longtime friend and training partner is just too much of an emotional wrench. Even among fighters, nobody wants to hurt someone they really care about. If that’s the script, however, Colby Covington and Jorge Masvidal aren’t following it.
Go back a couple years, and Covington and Masvidal seemed like the best of friends. The former roommates and longtime training partners at American Top Team could be seen posing for photos together, going to publicity events, and hanging out together for a night on the town. As Covington’s profile in the UFC rose, however, that friendship seemed to quickly disintegrate. The past year has seen Covington leave ATT, while publicly feuding with many of the MMA mega-camp’s longtime members—Masvidal included.
With both men fresh off a loss to Kamaru Usman, and plenty of public drama to build hype around, it seems like this could be the perfect time for a bout between ‘Gamebred’ and ‘Chaos.’ But following UFC 251, Masvidal was quick to shut down the idea of fighting “the fragile guy with the MAGA hat.” And for his part, Covington sounds just as uninterested in, and dismissive of, Masvidal and his skills.
“I could care less about fighting him,” Covington told Submission Radio in a recent interview. “I don’t need to prove to fight him to prove my legacy in this organization and my legacy. My legacy won’t be defined by fighting journeyman like him. So, I could care less if I ever fight him. I’m gonna get my rematch with Marty Fakenewsman and I will hold that undisputed title soon, and anybody can come get it. I take on all-comers. I’m not a little b-tch like Street Judas, ‘oh, I don’t want to fight him’. You know, he wants to pick and choose easy fights, ‘oh, I want to fight Nate Diaz. Oh, I want to fight Demian Maia, avenge my loss to a f-cking 40-year-old virgin.’ So, I’m not a little b-tch like Street Judas, I’ll beat everybody in the world, and I don’t need to pick and choose my fights like him.”
Covington added that he and Masvidal have already fought “every single day in the gym.” And that during those sessions, Covington says he “knocked him out all the time.”
“I used to beat the sh-t out of him, poke him, play with him, tell him he’s a little b-tch, whisper in his ear, and he couldn’t do nothing about it. He couldn’t stop me. So, of course he doesn’t want to fight me. Why would he want to fight me? Why would he want to fight a guy that he has no chance to win against?”
While Covington says that he’s prepared to fight anyone and everyone, there’s no word yet on just who he’ll face next in his return to the Octagon. He last fought in December of 2019, losing to the welterweight champion via 5th round TKO.