A report surfaced a short time ago stating that UFC Welterweight Champion Tyron Woodley would defend the gold against Kamaru Usman in the co-main event of UFC 235.
Colby Covington is the UFC Interim Welterweight Champion and was expecting to get the next title shot, but says the UFC robbed their own fans by not putting the title unification bout together.
“Yeah, I definitely took note of that. It was funny to see Woodley out there begging for me, he got to the point where he was begging…’no, please…please, no, I want to fight Colby.’ Then you know Ariel Helwani did a poll, like a hundred thousand people who voted on the poll…80% of them picked me to fight him. MMA Junkie did a poll, 90%, it was a landslide…they wanted me to fight Woodley. I mean, the UFC…they’re just shitting on their fans. They’re shitting on all the people that built up their four billion dollar company and they’re devaluing their brand because if you want to be in business and you want to act like your the top mixed martial arts brand, you want to compete with the NFL and the NBA. There has to be some legitimacy, you give a guy a title…you know, its like in the NFL…you win an AFC Championship, you’re going to the Super Bowl. It doesn’t matter if the boss hates you, it doesn’t matter if Roger Goodell hate (Bill) Belichick and (Tom) Brady for Deflate-gate. They’re still going to the Super Bowl because they won the AFC Championship, for them to rob me of a title shot when I have a belt and they’ll never be able to take this belt away and no one’s beat me for this belt. Its ludicrous, it makes no sense and I don’t want the fans to feel sorry for me. There’s nothing that people should feel sorry for me about, they (the UFC) should feel sorry for the fans because they robbed the fans of the most entertaining guy in the division. I’m the guy that’s made the division relevant, everybody’s talking about this division again because my names in it. That’s the only reason that anybody cares, if the UFC wants to dig their own grave…let them do it,” says Covington in an exclusive interview with Fightful’s James Lynch.
Usman does sit at #2 in the UFC Welterweight Division rankings, with Covington being the only fighter ahead of him.
Covington says he was ready to fight Woodley and Nick Diaz in November at UFC 230, once he got the clearance after getting surgery done.
“The first (date) available that I was able to take a fight was November and that’s when I accepted Madison Square Garden with Tyron Woodley, then last minute…he like ducked out three weeks before the fight. I stayed on call for the fight until three weeks out and they (the UFC) were like ‘hey, can we do Nick Diaz?’ I was like he doesn’t make any sense, I’ll fight him…he’s an easy fight. I’ll save the day for you guys if that’s gonna make your company business and money, no problem…lets do it. I was cleared to fight and ready to go in November, they were trying to offer me September and I’m like dude…these aren’t my doctors, they’re your doctors, these are the UFC’s doctors that are saying ‘no, you’re not cleared…you’re on antibiotics. No, you gotta get TUE’s from USADA and clear it up with Jeff Novitzky so you don’t fail a test.’ I’m a natural fighter, I’m not like Jon Jones, who cheats and does steroids,” says Covington.
There is no word on when Covington will fight again, with his last bout taking place at UFC 225 last year.
