Kyle Terada-USA TODAY Sports
It seems all love has been lost between Jorge Masvidal and Colby Covington.
Jorge Masvidal has claimed that his beef with teammate and friend Colby Covington stemmed from the former interim UFC welterweight champion “ripping off” one of their coaches.
Masvidal and Covington both train out of American Top Team in Florida. The coaches that Masvidal claimed Covington ripped off are the same ones that led him to interim UFC welterweight gold when he defeated Rafael dos Anjos at UFC 225 last June.
Speaking recently on The Dan LeBatard Show, Masvidal claimed Covington failed to pay a mutual coach of theirs, and that’s when problems occurred between the two.
“He ripped off my coach, that was his coach. We were with him until his title fight. After he won the title, he owed him a certain amount of money, didn’t pay him,” Masvidal said. “I said if you don’t pay him I’m going to f—k you up. My coach got in between it, it doesn’t have to be like this, let it slide, since thing I ain’t talked to the dude. (Transcription via MMA Fighting)
“It’s been about a year and some change. It is what it is. All these words they do have consequences because this guy used to sleep on my couch, used to eat off me cause I was the one with the sponsors. He was just still relatively an amateur and I was helping this guy out. It hurts that he would do that in a way just for a like on Facebook, just for a retweet on Twitter, he’s doing that, to get you and me talking about him.”
Masvidal is coming off undoubtedly the most impressive win off his career, a record-breaking five-second KO over Ben Askren at UFC 239 in July. He will fight Nate Diaz in the main event of UFC 244 in November, meanwhile for Covington his future isn’t so certain at this point, as he hoped to get a title shot against current welterweight champion Kamaru Usman, but nothing has yet been booked.
“We were [friends] until he ripped off my coach and since then I ain’t talked to him,” Masvidal said. “He’s mad because people don’t care to see him fight. They want to see him lose. That’s what they tune into. He does this whole heel thing because he couldn’t get people to regularly watch his fights so then he said if I go over the top, create this persona, people will hate me, then people will tune in.”