King Of The Wrestling Grind

Wrestling ace, Colby Covington, will challenge the throne of Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) Welterweight kingpin, Leon Edwards, this Saturday (Dec. 16, 2023) at UFC 296 inside T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Objectively, does “Chaos” deserve a title shot off a single win over Jorge Masvidal way back in March 2022? Obviously not. Yet, I don’t find myself particularly bothered. In the last eight years, the only man to defeat Covington was Kamaru Usman at his peak, and Covington gave him hell in both fights. The bottom line here is that he has a very real shot at dethroning Edwards, and that’s all that’s really required for an intriguing title fight.

Let’s take a closer look at his skill set:

Striking

Covington is never going to be a pretty striker. He can, however, beat up more technical kickboxers thanks to his volume and pressure.

“Chaos” has good instincts overall — his seemingly random spinning punches and kicks land with decent consistency. He understands when it’s time to step in hard behind his punches or pop off a few jabs and keep his head back. The Southpaw’s money punches are the left overhand and right hook. In both cases, Covington slips his head off the center line well, turning the punch over hard at an angle that often allows him to slip straight punches. Like Daniel Cormier, Covington will often “fall over” on his punches as a form of head movement that flows directly into a takedown attempt.

Covington is a strong kicker as well. Against an Orthodox opponent, Covington will commonly be blasting the left leg to the open side. When faced with a fellow leftie, however, Covington adjusts well, still making good use of his lead leg round kick by aiming at the calf. In addition, Covington likes to mix snap kicks up the middle, which he’ll often follow up with long punches. On occasion, Covington will leap into the air with a flying knee and use that to hide a takedown attempt or flurry.

In the clinch, Covington is an active striker. He does a good job at securing one deep underhook and hanging on his opponent’s other arm. Eventually, he’ll come over top his opponent’s underhook with an elbow or break entirely with a spinning strike.

Covington’s performance against Robbie Lawler remains perhaps the best overall kickboxing showcase of his entire career. All of his usual tools were in play, but there was a much higher emphasis on his jab, which makes sense given he was fighting a fellow Southpaw in Lawler.

Much of the time, Covington was jabbing without committing much of his weight, not really looking to do damage with the blows. There are pros and cons to this approach, but it made plenty of sense opposite “Ruthless.” Lawler moves his head very well and loves to counter over the top of jabs, but Covington wasn’t exposing his chin while jabbing. Instead, he was making Lawler move his head and waste energy. Meanwhile, Covington would look to time him while out of position by looping overhands, hooking off to the mid-section, and frequently bring up a snappy lead leg round kick to the body.

Against Usman, both men found success in certain areas and struggled in others. For Covington, his best lands came in extended exchanges, when he would initiate with a jab or cross, avoid the counter with some head movement, and fire back right away. He was a bit looser than Usman, which really helped in such exchanges. Additionally, Covington’s left round kick to the inner thigh and mid-section was a great weapon, one Covington likely should have spammed even more.

On the flip side, Covington did struggle with some of Usman’s offensive weapons. Namely, the champion’s body work was a huge problem. Covington relies more on head movement than foot work to keep him safe, but that means his torso is more predictably in range. As a result, Usman’s cross and snap kick to the mid-section landed often, and even the most conditioned athlete will slow underneath enough body work.

Those body shots allowed Usman to line up the fight-ending right hand in the first fight.

In the rematch, Covington made the critical error of trying to win a technical kickboxing match with Usman for two-and-a-half rounds. He didn’t have the kickboxing chops to do so, however, so Usman’s power was a decisive difference maker.

As a result, Covington was in a major hole when he finally opted to start throwing down. All of sudden, Covington was landing the harder shots! He stung Usman badly with lead hand uppercuts, and his body kick once again did considerable damage. He won the final two rounds pretty clearly, but the style change didn’t come soon enough.

Otherwise, Covington’s shift to MMA Masters has him trying to shift stances and sit on his right hand a bit more. Opposite Tyron Woodley, his two cleanest punches of the fight came from his right side. In one exchange, Covington rolled following his cross, allowing him to step into a powerful right. Later, Covington fired a left high kick from the Southpaw stance, stepped Orthodox, then popped Woodley with a stiff 1-2 as the former champion tried to back off (GIF).

This development continued into the Jorge Masvidal grudge match. There were a couple interesting new wrinkles to his strand up in that fight. Most notably, Covington was looking to pop the 1-2-1 from either stance. Finishing combos with the jab is something we don’t see enough off in MMA, and it’s a great way to interrupt a potential counter.

In addition, Covington attacked a lot more off the threat of the level chance — a very smart addition to his game! He threw a ton of high kicks set up solely by ducking low, keeping his eyes down, then blasting the kick. He also stung Masvidal pretty badly by dipping low and cracking his opponent with a Southpaw right hand, both as a right hook and nice right uppercut.

Wrestling

A Division I All-American wrestler and two-time Pac-10 champion out of Oregon State University (OSU), Covington is among the most decorated wrestlers in UFC currently.

One of the more special things about Covington’s wrestling is that he can really do it all. Covington can drive opponents from their feet in the open with a double leg. He can overpower foes in the clinch. Perhaps most importantly, Covington can chain wrestle along the fence.

Covington transitions between the single-leg, body lock and double-leg takedown extremely well. It’s really his signature strategy, and perhaps the best, most dominant example came against Dong Hyun Kim. Though he’s now retired, Kim ranked as the seventh best Welterweight in the world at the time, and Covington completely dominated him.

Against the larger Judo master, Covington wasted no time in using a single leg to drive Kim into the fence. Then, Covington pulled Kim off the fence momentarily with the leg, allowing him to move to the body lock. From there, Covington off-balanced his foe enough to slip his head to the outside and cut the corner, taking the back clinch. From that position, Covington proved his grip strength excellent by hanging and wearing on Kim, constantly looking to force small trips or threatening the back take/mat return. When Kim turned toward Covington in an attempt to scrape him off his back, Covington dropped into a double leg and planted him on the mat.

Over and over, this sequence of transitions played out, sometimes in the opposite order or with a different finish. Either way, Kim was unable to shake Covington. In his sole takedown against Usman, Covington managed to transition from a front head lock into a high crotch then to his back clinch, though he ultimately couldn’t hold “The Nigerian Nightmare” down.

Against Lawler, Covington found success with many different takedowns. His running knee pick made an appearance on a few occasions, a common tactic for “Chaos” after a failed shot lands him in the clinch. At times, he blasted Lawler from his feet with a double — not easy given Lawler’s athletic sprawl! Finally, Covington also made use of Khabib Nurmagomedov’s single-leg takedown finish, yanking the leg high with both hands and kicking out the base leg.

It was overwhelming.

Covington’s defensive wrestling showcase came versus Demian Maia. Opposite the Brazilian, however, Covington did an excellent job of denying the Brazilian his signature takedown chain. Maia loves to shoot a high-crotch takedown and then off-balance his foe with trip and dump attempts. Even if the finish fails, he’s often able to circle towards the back and jump on.

Covington shut all that down by focusing on bumping Maia with his hip and knocking Maia’s head into the inside position — a single leg takedown rather than high-crotch. From there, Covington could more effectively drop his weight on Maia via a sprawl, preventing most of Maia’s favorite transitions and really forcing his opponent to exhaust himself from a bad position.

Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu

Covington has finished five of his opponents via submission, each by way of rear-naked choke or arm-triangle choke. These are the classic submissions of a transitional wrestler, someone who dominates by getting behind his opponent and working into a dominant position.

The rear-naked choke comes as a result of Covington’s wrestling talent. The way Covington drags his foe to the mat often encourages them to turn away in an attempt to stand. Usually, Covington will immediately look to catch his foe’s wrist, wrapping up a two-on-one grip. From that position, Covington can pummel his opponent with the free hand, and he’s often able to slip a hook in soon.

While maintaining control of the wrist, Covington will hip in and flatten his opponent. Once there, it’s largely a matter of whether his foe presents the neck or stays flat that determines whether Covington will earn a submission or technical knockout stoppage.

The arm-triangle often presents itself from a similar situation. As Covington hangs on the wrist, his other arm can wrap around the arm and neck to really weigh down on his opponent. If his opponent tries to turn to his back, he’ll fall directly into the arm-triangle.

Defensively, Covington was submitted by Warlley Alves’ nasty guillotine choke in his ninth professional fight. It’s not too uncommon for high-level wrestlers to suffer a submission loss like that early in their fight careers, as they can be a bit too confident that the submission will fail. Woodley tried to recreate that defeat, but Covington twice used his grip around the neck to instead lift and slam his foe.

Conclusion

This is 35-year-old Covington’s last shot at UFC gold. He either attains the championship status that has eluded him for so long, or he’s remembered as the longtime Welterweight also-ran. Legacy is up for grabs!

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Andrew Richardson, a Brazilian jiu-jitsu brown belt, is a professional fighter who trains at Team Alpha Male in Sacramento, California. In addition to learning alongside world-class talent, Andrew has scouted opponents and developed winning strategies for several of the sport’s most elite fighters.

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Remember that MMAmania.com will deliver LIVE round-by-round, blow-by-blow coverage of the entire UFC 296 fight card right here, starting with the early ESPN+ “Prelims” matches online, which are scheduled to begin at 6 p.m. ET (simulcast on ESPN2 at 8 p.m. ET), before the pay-per-view (PPV) main card start time at 10 p.m. ET (also on ESPN+).

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