‘America Is Basically A Sports Team … In The Special Olympics’

It appears that Colby Covington’s trash talk has taken him to its limit.

UFC 296 was supposed to be Covington’s long-awaited moment to become the undisputed Welterweight champion (at least in his mind, anyway). Instead, “Chaos” left exactly that at home and gave fans one of the worst performances of his career, if not the worst.

The reigning champion, Leon Edwards, outstruck and outwrestled Covington for their allotted 25 minutes to win a unanimous decision. Build up to the fight was relatively tame, especially for a Covington affair, but that changed at the UFC 296 pre-fight press conference last week (Dec. 14, 2023). Covington took a shot at Edwards, saying the champion would join his murdered father in hell on fight night. This upset Edwards, who tossed a water bottle at Covington on stage as security restrained each fighter. After his loss, Covington remained unapologetic for his comments after immediately stating when speaking to Joe Rogan in the Octagon he was thankful for the first responders and U.S. troops — a reoccurring response from his previous title loss. For Australian Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ) legend, Craig Jones, who was in attendance throughout fight week, the whole saga proved one thing.

“A valuable lesson Colby Covington taught us about America,” Jones said on Instagram. “And that is you can say anything you want. You can walk out, say, ‘I hate gay people, I hate women. I think the homeless people should die.’ As long as you follow it with, ‘But I support first responders. I support the troops and god bless America,’ and the whole crowd will cheer.

“America is basically a sports team, but a sports team in the Special Olympics,” he continued. “That’s how I’d summarize basically what we learned from this weekend.”

As the fight drew near, Covington started to make the match up about the U.S. vs. the U.K. and how it would look like The Revolutionary War, along with how he had the support of former U.S. President, Donald Trump. Ultimately, Covington is now 2-3 in his last five fights, alternating wins and losses.