There’s no doubting that Colby Covington is a great fighter, but outside of the cage, it’s a whole different story.
Following his outstanding performance against Tyron Woodley at UFC Vegas 11, Covington took things to another level in his post-fight interviews.
After welterweight champion Kamaru Usman referenced Covington’s congratulatory call with Donald Trump, Covington replied:
“Who did you get a call from?! Did you get a call from, freaking, your little tribe? Did they give you some smoke signals for you? (laughs) You’re a joke Marty Fake Newsman!”
And in the post-fight press conference, Covington told reporters that “Black Lives Matter is a complete sham,” before also labelling Tyron Woodley a “communist” for supporting the Black Lives Matter movement.
“He’s a communist. He’s a Marxist. He stands for criminals. He hates America, and that’s why he got broke tonight,” Covington said. In this video, Ant Walker and Matthew Wells respond to Covington’s comments from Saturday night and share powerful messages regarding the dangerous pathway the UFC is heading down by allowing blatant racism to go unpunished.
In response to Covington labeling Woodley a terrorist, Wells asked “why?”
“For speaking up for black lives in this country? For saying that there should be racial equality and that there shouldn’t be racial injustice at the hands of the police?
“We shouldn’t be killing our black people for minor crimes in the streets. A routine traffic stop results in the death of a black person. Why? Why is that happening? And you’re mad that he’s speaking up about that?
“Some of these protests have got out of hand. That’s absolute facts. Some of them have turned into riots. But we’ve also figured out that the people who have started that are instigating things and are not really there for the true message.”
Walker says that he felt a lot of different things but surprised wasn’t one of them.
He mentions how Covington seemed unusually quiet in the leadup to fighting Woodley, and ultimately sees what Covington did/said after the fight as an act of cowardice.
Walker says that to relate the Black Lives Matter movement to terrorism is “an absolutely insulting travesty, and for the promotion to stand back idly and let it happen is utterly, utterly repugnant.”
“To imply that people — not even imply — to just outright say people who want to live and not be shot down or discriminated against or attacked or treated any differently because of their skin color are terrorists… you’ve gotta have quite a warped sense of thought.”
Wells added: “Fuck Colby Covington for what he was saying last night. I’m sorry if that’s outside of the realm of journalistic integrity, but you know what else is outside of the realm of any sort of decency… That’s blatant racism. And he was putting that on display last night.”
