Colby Covington has his fair share of enemies in the mixed martial arts community. And by fair share, we mean near enough everybody.
From his emphatic, ongoing rivalry with reigning welterweight champion Kamaru Usman to his bitter back-and-forth social media war with heavy hitter Tyron Woodley, the American has an endless supply of opponents to verbally spar with. However, for the past few months, Covington has been brewing a storm within world-renowned gym American Top Team, home of Amanda Nunes and Junior Dos Santos to name just a few.
Covington himself trains at the gym but has previously been found slandering teammate and former friend Jorge Masvidal, as well as Dustin Poirier and Joanna Jedrzejczyk, all elite UFC competitors. Things became so intense with Masvidal that owner Dan Lambert intervened, allocating different time slots for the two to train in order for them to not cross paths. That wasn’t the final time Lambert put his foot down.
“I broke a promise to my agent, Dan Lambert. And I really do feel bad, and I feel ashamed,” Covington told Submission Radio.
“Yesterday I was asked a question by [Ariel] Helwani about Dustin, my teammate, and I kind of lost my cool. I was too busy spitting fire on the world and I was so hyped up about the Woodley fight that I kind of went off on Dustin. I just want to say that I’m sorry, Dustin. You’re still my friend, we can be friends.”
Covington then explained that he and Lambert, who happens to be his agent on top of being responsible for the gym, had a promise to not talk foully of Poirier as there was no need for any beef. As Covington and Poirier compete in separate divisions, it’s highly unlikely for their paths to cross.
“I broke that promise with Dan, and I told him I wasn’t going to talk about Dustin, he’s not gonna talk about me, and I’m ashamed, man. I’m usually not like this, but you know, I’m a man to admit when I’m wrong, and I’m wrong, I made a mistake,” Covington said.
“Our business and our paths are not gonna cross, so there’s no reason to talk about each other. Let’s keep everything normal at the gym, and guys can interact and train, and they can hate each other, but we have enough space in the gym where there shouldn’t be any problems, let’s just handle our business.”
“I want to have a civil gym and I don’t want there to be drama or beef in the gym, I want to keep things civil.”
Covington stated that he’d like to sit and discuss things with Poirier, as he believes they could both benefit from getting things off their chests.
In spite of apologizing to Poirier, “Chaos” later criticized his teammate Joanna Jedrzejczyk in the same interview. Jedrzejczyk recently lost to Zhang Weili in a bout that will be remembered as one of the best bouts of 2020.
Jedrzejczyk had claimed that Covington “owed her an apology” for previous remarks he had made about her.
“And as far as Joanna Jedrzejczyk, you know, his little sidepiece, that they got a little fling going on right now, I could give a fuck less about her. She’s washed up, nobody cares about her. She used to be the boogiewoman, now she’s the boobie woman. Look at her face. She got her face rearranged, and I called it.”
“In the beginning of the week, the week before her fight, I put a video saying, hey guys, Joanna wants an apology from me, so here I am for my apology. Joanna, I’m sorry. I’m sorry that you had to get your face rearranged and everybody’s going to get rich at MyBookie. And that’s exactly what happened, I got rich. I made a Rolex off of Joanna Jedrzejczyk’s bitch ass.”