Colby Covington had plenty to say at Wednesday’s UFC Tampa media day. No surprise there.
Taking to the mic in the first scrum of the day, Covington addressed the cameras to question LeBron James and his connection to so-called “Diddy parties,” calling the NBA star a “scumbag.”
That set the tone for much of what would follow from Covington, who started (well, past James anyway) with a low blow on welterweight champ Belal Muhammad.
Asked about how his UFC Tampa main event with Joaquin Bckley came together, Covington claimed that “I called the UFC when Belal [Muhammad] had a pager on his foot, and he backed out because I guess the pager exploded on his ankle and messed up his toe. Which is just weird, you guys need to ask Belal, why is he wearing pagers around his ankle? That’s just weird.”
Belal is, as is well known, Palestinian. In September, Israel, currently at war in Gaza following an attack by Hamas last year, also executed an indiscriminate attack on Lebanon, rigging pagers to explode which ultimately killed both enemy targets, as well as multiple children. The message Covington is sending: Belal is a terrorist.
Pretty low, pretty racist, pretty much what to expect from Colby Covington at this point. He’d also have you believe that he wanted to step into a fight with Shavkat Rakhmonov on short notice. If you buy that, he might even sell you a bridge in Brooklyn.
“So [Muhammad] pulled out of the fight, so I called the UFC to volunteer. I wanted to fight Shavkat,” Covington continued. “That was the fight I wanted; I think he’s all hype, he hasn’t fought anybody at my level, an elite fighter in a five-round fight.”
“I was excited to fight Shavkat, but the UFC already had other plans, they said hey we’re going to do the other fight with the cuck, Ian Garry. So they wanted to do that fight, but they’re like ‘hey we need to sell this fight with Joke-quin Buckley in Tampa, he’s not a star, he’s a bum, he’s a nobody, so we need to someone to sell this show. Can you be a company man, come do it?'”
Covington said yes to the fight with Buckley. Which might be the only believable part of the entire store. Though what Covington claims transpired was a conversation that went like this:
“I said ‘absolutely Hunter Campbell. Whatever you need, man. I’m a company man, I love this company, God bless the UFC, God bless America. What a great opportunity to fight in my home state, defend home turf in Tampa, Florida. Three hours up the road from where I live in Miami, Florida.’ This is just a beautiful opportunity, I’m thankful to be here. Thank you UFC.
If Colby Covington is trying to sell a fight with Muhammad, he’s going to need a lot more than wins. At 2-3 in his past five and 0-3 in fights for the undisputed welterweight title, “Chaos” has nearly vanished from the title picture. His activity level has been low as well, fighting just once a year for five straight years now. His two wins in that span? Over Jorge Masvidal and Tyron Woodley, both gone from the promotion (though Masvidal may be on the verge of a return).
All jokes by Covington aside he’s 2-3 in his last five fights with his only victories against the Tyron Woodley and Jorge Masvidal who have been out of the UFC for some time now. He’ll need an impressive performance to throw his name into the Muhammad sweepstakes.
Watch the entire media day scrum with Colby Covington above. He faces Joaquin Buckley in the main event of UFC Tampa on Saturday.
