Colby Covington is a character with many enemies within the sport of mixed martial arts.
When someone takes a look at an interview that he does with an MMA outlet, they see a larger than life character. But in Covington’s recent interview with The Daily Wire, a conservative news website and media company, Covington was much more reserved, soft-spoken and open with his answers.
One of the topics that was perhaps the most intriguing was what he had to say about his former teammate at American Top Team and the UFC’s no. 1 ranked lightweight contender, Dustin Poirier. Covington detailed his past with Poirier, and even said he would help Poirier with contractual dealings.
“We have a history that goes back almost 10 years. We used to train at a gym in South Florida. We trained blood, sweat and tears for 10 years together, I helped him so many times,” Covington said to The Daily Wire. “I remember I used to help him out with his contract all the time, ‘cause I was a little ahead of him and I’d won a world title and he was like ‘Hey, how much is your pay?’ Like, ‘How much you gonna make here?’”
While plenty of fans and pundits in the MMA community are well aware that tension between Covington and other fighters at American Top Team was rising prior to his departure from the gym, not many are aware of Covington’s side of the story.
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‘Chaos’ then went into detail about when his relationship with Poirier soured in 2019.
“So, I help him be a well rounded fighter and then one day he just decided to turn his back on me,” Covington said. “He’s like ‘I’m not training with you. I’m not gonna help you.’ I was gonna fight this guy Robbie Lawler, who’s a legend in the UFC. It was one of his friends. He’s like, ‘I’m not training with Colby, I don’t want nothing to do with Colby. I don’t like his act, his character. I want him kicked out of the gym,’ and like he started putting his feelings into the gym owner and was like ‘Hey I want him out.’ Like, ‘I don’t want him here.’
“So, he was kind of one of the reasons I was forced to leave my old gym. So we just have a very bad history. I mean, I don’t have any nice things to say about him.”
With Covington laying out his timeline of events between him and Poirier, it would certainly be interesting to hear the perspective of ‘El Diamante’.
Colby Covington details history with Dustin Poirier: “He was kind of one of the reasons I was forced to leave my old gym.”
