Colby Covington (image via UFC / YouTube)

By FCF Staff

For months, there’s been speculation about a fight between former friends, turned foes, Jorge Masvidal and Colby Covington. But, according to the latter, the much-discussed fight no longer makes sense for him.

Covington and Masvidal were teammates and friends when ‘Chaos’ was still training at American Top Team. The two had a falling out, however, and since then, there’s been considerable talk about the rivals fighting at some juncture.

But, recently Covington spoke with MMA Junkie. While discussing a match-up with his former friend, who was knocked out by welterweight champ, Kamaru Usman in April, Covington said this.

“It doesn’t make sense,” Covington said. “I’m not gonna have people downplay my victory if I beat him. I’ve already owned his soul for the last 10 years when we trained together at American Top Team. You can go look on the internet, I used to hold him down in our kitchen and just pat on his face, ‘Get up Masvidal, get up, do something,’ and he couldn’t do anything. So he knows I’m his daddy, I’m his rightful owner, and there’s a reason he ducked the fight for so long. He doesn’t want to fight me.

“He knows I own the keys to his soul, so I don’t know. If the UFC really wants to do it, I’m the people’s champ, and I’m America’s champ for a reason. I’ll do what the people want, what the UFC want. I want to put the biggest and best fights in the organization, but I don’t feel like he’s the biggest and best fight in the organization. The guy has almost 20 losses on his record, he’s nothing more than a journeyman at this point, so his 10 seconds of fame are up, and there’s nothing for me to gain anymore.”

Masvidal’s second loss to Usman dropped his overall record to 35-15. Covington (16-2), meanwhile, is coming off a stoppage win over Tyron Woodley in September, which followed his TKO loss to Usman in 2019.

UFC President Dana White recently said Covington is the number one contender for a rematch with Usman.