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Dan Lambert felt Colby Covington could have continued in the fifth round but admits he likely wouldn’t have won the fight.
Colby Covington felt referee Marc Goddard robbed the fans of a fair fight at UFC 245 by stopping the action after Kamaru Usman dropped and finished him in the final round.
Covington was dropped twice but looked to be defending himself from Usman’s ground-and-pound, and, while American Top Team (ATT) owner Dan Lambert admits Goddard didn’t make the greatest stoppage in the world, the Brazilian Jiu Jitsu practitioner says it was highly unlikely — although not impossible — that Covington was going to make a comeback and win the fight.
“He wasn’t going to win the fifth round after getting dropped,” Lambert said in a recent interview with MMA Fighting. “The fight was even going into it so whoever won the fifth round was going to win the fight. So was it the greatest stoppage? Not really. It’s not like he was taking a bunch of damage but he wasn’t going to get the decision after it with the remaining 50 seconds unless something crazy happened.
“Can something crazy happen? I guess it can. The week before one of our other guys [Jairzinho Rozenstruik] got a knockout on [Alistair] Overeem with four seconds left. So anything can happen. Yeah, I think it was a little early but I don’t think it affected the decision. I know he was upset about it. No one wants to get the opportunity taken away from them. He was also upset about the “low blow” in the second round, I think that gave Usman a break, that didn’t really look low on the replay but sh*t like that happens in a fight.”
Covington, 31, suffered a broken jaw in the third round and is expected to be out of action for the foreseeable future. Usman, the reigning UFC welterweight champion, is anticipated to defend his title against either Jorge Masvidal or Leon Edwards.