The loss was a devastating blow for Covington, but he hasn’t discarded the fight and its result into the proverbial trash bin, never to watch or speak about it.
“I watched that fight maybe 50 times now,” said Covington. “I dissected every millisecond in it, I’ve seen all his patterns that he does, I picked up on all the bad tendencies and the bad habits I had in the first fight, and I really feel like there’s just nobody that’s gonna stop me this time.”
The 33-year-old’s confidence is nothing new. But his belief that the second meeting with Usman will produce a more positive result also comes from having a different team than he did in the first fight and his assertion that referee Marc Goddard did him no favors when the welterweights met in Las Vegas.
UFC 268 COUNTDOWN: Usman vs Covington 2 | Namajunas vs Zhang 2 | Gaethje vs Chandler | Full Episode
“I think last time there were some questionable calls that the ref made that slowed my momentum and changed the outcome of the fight,” said Covington. “This fight’s gonna be different. I’ve got great coaches around me – Daniel Valverde, Cesar Carneiro and Jonathan Lopez – I found the mistakes I made the last fight and I’m not gonna make those same mistakes this fight.”
If there was a silver lining in the first fight, it was that for all his pre-fight trash talk and his polarizing persona outside the Octagon, inside of it, he was all fighter. Sure, everyone knew he had talent, but in a dogfight, he stood in there every step of the way, fighting until Goddard said it was over. His effort in defeat even made those who wanted him to lose grudgingly give him respect.
UFC 268 FREE FIGHTS: Namajunas vs Zhang 1 | Gaethje vs Johnson | Zhang vs Jędrzejczyk | Chandler vs Hooker | Covington vs Woodley | Usman vs Covington 1
“It’s definitely a nice, little extra boost to the confidence and to the morale, because I know everybody hates me in this sport, and they just look at what I give them in this sport and they don’t really know the person I am, so they want to judge me off what they think I am,” said Covington. “So for them to even have to come out and swallow their pride and say, ‘Yeah, man, I hate Colby as a character or as a person, but he’s a great fighter and his will and intensity is unmatched,’ it’s good to hear those things. It’s a little boost, but none of that matters to me. The only thing that matters to me is getting that world title. I don’t want to go down in this sport as being one of the toughest or having the strongest iron will that the sport’s ever seen. I want to go down as the greatest of all-time. That’s my focus and motivation.”
