Colby Covington and Israel Adesanya
UFC welterweight contender Colby Covington makes a bold claim about his two fights against welterweight champion Kamaru Usman, and forks out his case for fighting Israel Adesanya
Colby Covington is embarking on his brilliant display at UFC 272 against bitter-rival Jorge Masvidal. He has earned his right at calling his shots and called out Dustin Poirier for his next fight.
Covington sat down with Submission Radio and discussed his fight with Masvidal, his callout of Poirier and plans for the future. He even made a bold claim stating that he has already beat the welterweight champion, Kamaru Usman, twice, and a third fight is not in his books right now.
Speaking about his jump to middleweight and facing the champion Israel Adesanya, Covington said, ”Yeah, I will definitely go up and fight Adesanya, but I don’t know if he wants it. But he doesn’t have a dance partner right now. Some of these guys they building up to fight are unoriginal. I mean why can’t Usman fight him, the fans are asking for that fight. I beat Usman twice, Usman su**s. And why can’t I fight Adesanya. He can’t stop my wrestling. I’ll pick him up and drop him on his head. He is just a cardio kick-boxer.”
Adesanya has ruled out a fight against his African brother Usman at several occasions now, and a fight against Colby would make sense if he can rack up another win against a top-ranked opponent.
UFC middleweight champion Israel Adesanya is a force to be reckoned with currently. He is on a career trajectory, similar to the P4P king of the UFC, Kamaru Usman- lapping guys in their respective division. But what sets Usman’s case apart is the idea of a few more exciting fights in the welterweight division, unlike Izzy’s division which in all honesty is getting static.
The situation is almost reminiscent of Anderson Silva’s prime and dominance of the middleweight throne, which somewhat made the division motionless. Until he met his match in Chael Sonnen, who trash-talked Silva like never seen before. Although not the toughest competition that the Brazilian faced on paper, Sonnen worked his way into the fight by playing mind games and trash vilifying whenever he got a chance. In doing so he put up one of the most difficult fights for Silva in their first encounter and even landed a rematch.
Chael Sonnen sees similar potential in the Adesanya- Covington narrative.
“There was once a fighter named Anderson Silva, and everybody knew how great he was but Anderson had a hard time drawing attention, but only because people thought they knew how the movie was going to end,” Sonnen said on The Chael Sonnen Show (h/t MMA Fighting). “He finally got a counterpart that captivated the imagination of the world to think, ‘Wait a minute, this guy could actually beat him.’ I think that ‘Izzy’ is that good. I think that Izzy needs that.
“I think [Colby Covington] needs to go up to 185,” Sonnen continued. “Look, Colby has called out three guys in the last two weeks: He, of course, called out Kamaru Usman; he called out Israel Adesanya; and he called out Dustin Poirier. Now you’ve got to understand, the one thing those three guys have in common is they all have world championship belts somewhere on the mantle at home. These are hard callouts by ‘Chaos,’ but ‘Chaos,’ who’s obviously a No. 1 contender, does not get a fight for a championship. It’s a tough spot.
Sonnen adds by saying, “And quite frankly, nobody needs Colby as bad as Izzy Adesanya. I don’t know if Israel is aware of that yet, but he’s starting to fight people that aren’t doing their job in the media, that aren’t bringing the attention, that aren’t helping the brand and making the marquee fight as big as it could be. I think if Izzy stood back and saw what Colby has to offer, that’s gonna be a partner that he would like to do business with.”
More MMA news
Follow our dedicated MMA page for instant MMA news and updates
