Khamzat Chimaev might be one the biggest rising stars and this week he’s been taking aim at all the fighters he’d like to fight, including two retired legends and former interim champion, Colby Covington.
The first two retired fighters he called out were seemingly for showboating reasons, it’s unlikely either Brock Lesnar or Georges St-Pierre would come back to the UFC to fight him.
But Covington might be game …
On Tuesday morning Chimaev took to Twitter to antagonize one of the most universally hated fighters.
He posted a photo of Covington being struck in the face by Kamaru Usman with the caption, “Let’s got b***h fight with me @colbycovmma I will take your [heart emoji, blood emoji and coffin emoji].”
He followed that up with two more tweets telling Covington to “call the cops” and poking at Covington’s weak spot … his patriotism.
“You do not represent USA i represent USA,” he wrote. “You represent cowardice.”
Covington is 1-2 in his last three appearances with both losses coming via hard-fought battles with the champion.
Chimaev returned to the Octagon after a one-year hiatus and a brief retirement due to COVID-19 complications to defeat Li Jingliang at UFC 267. He remained undefeated and proved a lot of the doubters wrong.
Covington has yet to reply to the call-out but has focused his energy on calling out former friend and teammate, Jorge Masvidal. But Covington has spoken about Chimaev in the past.
“He’s a joke. He needs to beat someone worthy — someone in the top 5, someone in the top of the rankings, not just fight hand-picked people.” Covington told MMA Fighting. “What does he have, four UFC fights? The media loves to rush these kids and these hype jobs. This is fighting, man. People can get seriously hurt from rushing people like that.
Khamzat Chimaev goes off on ‘cowardice’ Colby Covington
