UFC 272: The Truth About Colby Covington
A look at why the talented fighter turned insufferable welterweight contender had to adopt a persona in order for his skills and success to finally start being recognized
We, fight fans, are to blame for being subjected to the last several years of Colby Covington’s belaboured antics and preposterous gimmick.
Maybe not all fight fans, but a good enough portion of the fight-loving population had little to no interest in a talented wrestle-boxer that was having tremendous overall success inside the Octagon that we pushed him to tap into the worst elements of his personality and personal beliefs and use that as a means to try and get over.
And it worked.
It worked exceptionally well.
It worked to the point that Covington is headlining this weekend’s UFC 272 pay-per-view in a non-title grudge match opposite his former BFF, Jorge Masvidal.
It’s the kind of fight that doesn’t headline pay-per-view shows any more, not unless the combatants are genuine draws and the UFC knows that people are legitimately going to tune in… and people are going to tune in.
Colby Covington is an excellent fighter.
He is the second-best welterweight in the UFC at the moment, and if not for the existence of Kamaru Usman, he might very well be a couple years into a dominant run as champion.
You could see that Covington was a genuine talent — a high-motor wrestler that understood how to weaponize his conditioning and pace — from the outset, and it became clear he was someone people should keep an eye on when he beat veteran Mike Pyle at UFC 187. “Quicksand” wasn’t the kind of guy you beat three fights into your UFC career and eight fights into being a professional if you didn’t have something that gave you a chance to stand out from the pack, and Covington certainly had that something.
He lost his next fight — a preliminary card bout against Ultimate Fighter: Brazil winner Warlley Alves — to fall from the ranks of the unbeaten, but the setback only served to help him refine his approach. Against Alves, he left his head on the outset as he drove forward for an early takedown attempt, and the Brazilian made him pay, clamping onto a guillotine choke and forcing Covington to tap.
But plenty of elite talents stumble at least once on their way up the divisional ladder, and Covington quickly got things moving in the right direction again.
Six months after losing to Alves, he stopped Jonathan Meunier early in the third round of a fight he dominated in Ottawa, Ontario. Two months after that, he mauled promotional newcomer Max Griffin at UFC 202. Four months later, he posted a third straight victory, grinding out a good win over durable banger Bryan Barberena. Six months after that, he ventured to Singapore and completely out-hustled Dong Hyun Kim to push his winning streak to four, completing an impressive 12-month run inside the Octagon.
Only a few people took notice.
Despite finishing the first two of those four victories, the grinding nature of the second two victories coupled with his “Generic Wrestler Guy” profile made him easy for a lot of folks to overlook, especially during a year where Conor McGregor and Nathan Diaz became rivals, Tyron Woodley rose to the top of the welterweight division, and Jon Jones got pulled from his grudge match with Daniel Cormier at UFC 200 just a couple days before they were going to fight.
In a sport and landscape dominated by headlines, “Covington wrestles his way to seventh win in eight UFC starts” wasn’t doing the trick, so he found a way to force people to pay attention.
Reports of what prompted Covington to shift from the standard “I’ll fight whomever the UFC puts in front of me because I’m the best in the division and in order to prove that, you have to beat everyone” post-fight routine to the toxic nonsense he spewed after beating Demian Maia in São Paulo in the fall of 2017 have varied over the years.
What’s indisputable, however, is that a whole lot of people went from having zero interest in him to paying him all kinds of attention overnight after he said some genuinely heinous things about the people of Brazil following that victory.
The attention prompted him to further commit to the gimmick, steering into his support for President Donald Trump and the Republican Party, getting permission to use Kurt Angle’s WWE theme so fans can do the “You Suck!” part when walked to the Octagon, and operating as some kind of 34-year-old frat bro constantly mocking “nerds and virgins” as paid models looked miserable standing next to him.
It’s utterly cringe-worthy, and but it didn’t have to be this way.
While fight fans are certainly free to choose who they want to support and who they want to ignore, the trend over the last several years has been to focus on the loudest, most boisterous, most obnoxious people in the room, regardless of results. Competitors that simply handle their business and get on with things don’t get nearly as much coverage as fighters with lesser records, but a propensity to say wild things.
Covington recognized this and decided to become the loudest, most boisterous, most obnoxious person in the room, even though he was posting largely positive results.
But here’s the rub: Usman was a quiet, unheralded decision-machine on his way up the divisional ladder, but he stacked enough consecutive victories to earn a championship opportunity, won the title, and forced people to pay attention to him, at which point he started opening up a little more, letting folks know his story and know him.
Today, he’s one of the 10 biggest stars in the UFC.
Now, Covington doesn’t seem like he’s wired to operate like that. He’s more like that one kid everyone went to school with that couldn’t stand not being the center of attention, which prompted him to constantly try to make everyone look their way, which in turn left them constantly teetering between entertaining and insufferable and usually resulted in some kind of outburst or meltdown or ridiculous stunt that left them in a cast.
He couldn’t deal with his dominance not being enough to get people to pay attention to him, so we got the São Paulo outburst and now here we are.
But guys like Covington shouldn’t need to do something outlandish in order to garner attention.
Going 7-1 inside the Octagon to start your career and posting four straight victories against increasingly difficult competition in a talent-rich division like welterweight should be enough to make fans and media recognize your accomplishments and talk about you as a potential championship contender.
Unfortunately, we constantly tell these men and women that winning isn’t enough by questioning their resumes, questioning their marketability and popularity, and fixating on lesser talents with bigger personalities, right up until the point where it is impossible to not pay attention because they won championship gold, which is usually the point where the “why isn’t (Champion X) a bigger star?” questions start to be asked.
And the answer is because we — broadly speaking — didn’t pay enough attention to them as they worked their way up the divisional ladder because they weren’t loud enough, flamboyant enough, brash enough.
They won fights, sure, but winning isn’t enough. It’s not even be the most important thing these days.
These days you have to make headlines with your antics outside of the Octagon and the things you say about other fighters, other people on social media.
You have to be a character, a personality, a persona.
You have to be this preposterous version of Covington that struts around in ridiculous outfits, hawking betting websites and Bang Energy Drinks, pretending like he’s some kind of South Beach ladies man because we repeatedly told him that he needed to be more than a supremely talented fighter.
We’re Dr. Frankenstein here and Colby Covington is the monster we created.
These last four years of his tedious, insufferable bullshit is on us.
Maybe – just maybe — it’s time we start paying a little more attention to the actual fights and results, since last I checked, no one won UFC gold by talking nonsense on Twitter and having an over-the-top personality.