“Everybody has egos and they don’t like the fact that I’m here and they don’t like my presence,” said Covington. “I’m not an egomaniac. I’d love to like these guys, but they want to hate on the way I do business and the way I fight and the way I market myself, so that’s their problem, not mine. If they want to do something about it, they can come do something about it in the UFC Octagon.”
That’s why Covington and Masvidal are in the UFC 272 main event this weekend. Longtime buddies and training partners at American Top Team in Coconut Creek, Florida, the two broke ties around 2017-18, depending on which of the combatants you talk to. It’s always a sad state of affairs when two friends have gone their separate ways, and Covington admits as much when asked if had seen the pre-fight feature on the fight done by the UFC production team.
„It’s bittersweet because, on one hand, I remember talking with him all the time and being like, ‘If we have to fight someday, we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it and we’ll both make a lot of money and we can go back to being friends,’” Covington said. “But the other side of it is the way that it soured. He got real jealous when I beat Demian Maia and he lost to Demian Maia. It’s like the old saying goes, everybody wants to see you doing well, but Jorge never wanted to see me doing better than him. So as soon as I started doing better than him, that’s when he turned his back on me, backstabbed me, and started trying to undercut me in negotiations and make me look stupid in the media. Now I get to hold him accountable for all the words that he said to me and to the media.”
