After weeks of back-and-forth social media feuds between the two welterweight fighters, Colby Covington finally dropped the beef and decided to target bigger targets.
The announcement was made a couple of weeks after Machado agreed to a fight date with Covington. The American denied the claim and decided to forgo the battle after multiple callouts from Machado. Covington explained why he turned down the fight: “He’s going to learn the basic principle of life —you’re going to have to learn things the hard way. So I don’t know, I don’t know if that ship will come back around. I said what I needed to say about him. I said the truth and nothing but the truth…
“No one cares about the kid. He’s irrelevant. He doesn’t have any high profile wins. He does nothing for my career. Why would I fight a guy like this? If I go out there and beat this guy, everybody’s just going to be like. ‘Oh he’s a freaking nobody. There’s local jobbers on the independent circuit that are undefeated, so big deal, you took his 0. He hasn’t beaten anybody, he’s a nobody.’ So the fight does nothing for my career.”
The 36-year-old soon spoke in an interview with Submission Radio Show to reveal his next opponents. He said: “I would like to fight Belal Muhammad. He talked a lot of smack… now he’s squatting on his ranking, guys, he should have come out and fight…I want legacy fights. I think a guy like Charles Oliveira makes sense. He was out the saying the other day that he wants to come up to welterweight… You want this fight? You really wanna come up to welterweight?… Let’s see if you’re about it or if you’re just talk.”
Speaking on fighting Oliveira, the American said, “Yeah, you know a bigger name, a guy that’s a former champion, you know. Someone that’s actually done something in this business. Someone that’s actually relevant, and you know the fight draws and makes sense. And there are a lot of angles in that fight, you know. Is he going to defend his country? Or is he going to go into retirement and just always know that Colby Covington is the owner of Brazil? We’re very comparable in size. But skill? No, that’s where we’re not comparable. That’s where I just beat him everywhere. I’m just a better all-round better mixed martial artist.”
‘Chaos’ has had a rough couple of years, his inaction following his title challenge loss against welterweight champion Leon Edward making it his third-time strikeout for the shot of undisputed UFC belt. He won only two of his five fights in 2019 and does not rank over anyone currently in UFC’s official welterweight record, but the fighter is confident in his callout. It has been taking time to heal from his injury in his fight against Edwards. “Now the big thing is getting the strength back in my left leg because I was in a walking booth for 12 to 14 weeks, so now there is a lot of atrophy on that side, so I need to build back the strength in my calf, in my ankle and the bone is still healing…”
