Colby Covington explains how his UFC Tampa bout with Joaquin Buckley came to be.
Last month, following Belal Muhammad's withdrawl from a scheduled title defense at UFC 310, the UFC booked two end of year matchups, with one being a new main event for UFC Tampa as Colby Covington was announced as Joaquin Buckley's opponent for the show.
While speaking to Chael Sonnen for ESPN MMA, Covington addressed the matchup and the opportunity it presents for Joaquin Buckley.
"Yeah, so, you know, I called Hunter Campbell when Belal backed out of the title fight against Shalcott, and I wanted to fight Shavkat. I wanted to expose him and prove the hype wasn't real. So I offered to fight Shavkat, but Hunter wanted to go the direction of undefeated. So he said, hey, but if you want to fight, we really want you to fight Buckley in the main event of Tampa. Can you come save the day? So I said, yeah, I'm a company man. I love this company more than anything. So this isn't about giving Buckley the opportunity. This is about doing good business for the company."
Shavkat Rakhmonov would go on to defeat Ian Garry via Unanimous Decision at UFC 310 on December 8.
Ian Garry recently addressed a possibly fight with Covington. You can read more about that here.
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