Colby Covington provides a great argument for exclusive contracts.
“Chaos” is scheduled to wrestle former UFC middleweight champion Khamzat Chimaev atop the RAF Abu Dhabi fight card later this month in UAE, a matchup that had a certain amount of intrigue after Covington dominated Arman Tsarukyan at RAF 11 back in July.
Then Covington went and got submitted by UFC bantamweight prospect Raul Rosas Jr. at Hype Italy less than two weeks before his Chimaev showdown, which pretty much killed his aura and left
longtime critics (like this former champion) laughing their asses off.
“He gets f*cking taken down, double-legged, this is the whole fight, 40 seconds,” retired UFC bantamweight and current RAF headliner Henry Cejudo said on his Pound 4 Pound podcast with Kamaru Usman. “Look at this motherf*cker, and he’s supposed to beat Khamzat Chimaev next f*cking week? Colby Covington, you ain’t the king of sh*t no more. This does hurt. I guess people will get over it. If he’s able to come out and beat Khamzat Chimaev, people will forget it, or maybe he’ll get a rematch with Raul Rosas, but I think Raul will probably do that shit again to him.”
Covington is currently ranked No. 1 in the promotion.
“First and foremost, I would say this: That’s not excusable because of your name and the brand that you’ve built,” Usman added. “It’s not excusable. Now us, real fighters and competitors, we know how difficult and how different they are. Super different. Wrestling and jiu-jitsu are completely different. So Raul Rosas caught him off guard, got in there, and put him away. You could see [Covington’s] face. He was not ready for that level of intensity right away. For a guy that’s supposed to be intense, he was not ready for that level of intensity.”
Time for the “king” to surrender his crown?
