Bo Nickal believes his next UFC appearance is lining up perfectly, and this time, it comes with something new: real animosity. The surging middleweight contender is confident he will compete on the historic UFC White House card in June and if he gets his way, Colby Covington will be standing across from him.
Since joining the UFC as one of the most hyped prospects in recent memory, Nickal has kept things strictly professional. The three-time NCAA wrestling champion from Penn State built his MMA career on a simple philosophy: fight whoever the UFC puts in front of you. Across his early run, that mindset never wavered, even as expectations skyrocketed.
“Obviously that’s been the plan for me since after my last fight,” Nickal said. “It would be a great honor to be able to compete on that card. It’s just going to be so historic. Opponent-wise, I’m leaving it up to the UFC, but I think that the Colby matchup makes so much sense, especially considering the last RAF event and how everything went. Then him declaring he’s going up to middleweight. That’s just something I feel like it’s the fight to make.”
For Nickal, the appeal goes beyond rankings or exposure. This one is personal.
“For me, every single guy I’ve competed against up until this point in MMA, I haven’t really had motivation to beat that person specifically,” Nickal said. “The opponent was just the opponent. This one is definitely a little more personal, obviously with a lot of the comments he’s made. I feel like it would be fun to compete against somebody I actually want to fight. There’s just extra motivation for me, which would make it a lot of fun.”
The tension between Nickal and Covington started bubbling ahead of RAF 5 in January. Covington, who was preparing for a freestyle wrestling match against Luke Rockhold, took repeated shots at Nickal’s MMA résumé and future. Things escalated further after Nickal declined to compete at the event when Yoel Romero missed weight by seven pounds.
“So he misses weight by a couple of pounds? Big deal,” Covington said at the RAF 5 post-event press conference. “Luke was 20 or 30 pounds bigger than me and I didn’t complain. I went up a weight class. I weighed 197 with ankle weights on my feet… ‘Bozo’ Nickal has no reason to talk any shit. He should go back and stop quitting in the octagon before he ever speaks my name again.”
Nickal remains confident he would dominate Covington on the wrestling mats, but he’s far more interested in settling things inside the cage, especially if Covington follows through on his talk of moving up to 185 pounds.
The only real question, according to Nickal, is whether Covington would actually accept the fight.
“The biggest problem is Colby’s not dumb,” Nickal explained. “Colby’s a smart guy. I don’t think he would want to accept a fight against me. I think he knows what I would do to him in a fight. It’s hard to say. Maybe he sees it as a win-win. Everybody would expect me to destroy him, but he still gets to be on the White House card and talk his crap.”
“Is it worth it for me to go get beat up in front of the whole world on the White House card?” Nickal added. “That’s probably what he’s juggling in his mind. I think that’s the biggest obstacle, getting him to agree to it.”
Covington, a vocal supporter of President Donald Trump, would seemingly welcome the spotlight of a UFC White House event. Whether that extends to facing Nickal is another matter entirely.
For Nickal, the priority is clear. He wants the moment, the stage, and, ideally, the fight.
“For sure, that’s the fight, the event I want to be a part of,” Nickal said. “Regardless of the opponent, we’ll figure it out.”
