Colby Covington made history at UFC 225 when he defeated former UFC Lightweight Champion Rafael Dos Anjos by decision to win the UFC Interim Welterweight Title.
The often controversial star promised to take the belt to the White House and Covington recently delivered on that promise.
“It was top secret, obviously the secret service had to keep us under wraps. We weren’t allowed to open our mouths or say anything, so we had to keep it on the down low. It cam about from my winning and my promoting skills, I said that I wanted to take this belt right here and I wanted to take it to the White House. This is the replica, I actually gave my real belt that got wrapped around my belt in Chicago to Donald Trump. By the way, when he got the belt, he was trying to give it back to me and he was like ‘no, your gonna give this belt to me?’ He was like so excited when I left the belt with him, that was awesome to give him my real belt. I got the replica here, which is just as nice. It was a great moment, its history…no fighters ever went to a sitting president in office. I’m making history every day and that’s what I’m here to do is make the welterweight division great again,” says Covington in an exclusive interview with Fightful’s James Lynch.
Covington did become the first ever UFC champion to actually visit the White House and meet the reigning President Of the United States.
It wasn’t just a quick photo op with the President for Covington and Dana White, as they spent almost an hour speaking with Trump.
“We got to talk for a good 45 minutes, it was pretty crazy because I thought it was just gonna be a photo op. He actually sat down with us and shared some stories, we laughed…he was telling us his pro wrestling story with Vince McMahon at Summerslam or Wrestlemania. I believe he did the hair versus hair match with Vince McMahon, pretty funny story. He was just telling me about how much he respected me as a wrestler because he wrestled in high school, he wasn’t very good…he was always the guy counting the lights. Which means in wrestling, when your counting the lights…your on your back. So you weren’t very good, just pretty funny man…he’s a funny, stand up guy. He’s just a really humble one, down to earth person. So anything anybody says about him, they got bad things to say about him…try saying them around me, they’ll get slapped,” says Covington.
With Trump spending potentially two more years in the White House, it could give Covington plenty of more opportunities to meet him before the presidency ends.
