Colby Covington suffers no shortage of enemies. One of his earliest was a former teammate and current no. 1 ranked lightweight contender, Dustin Poirier.
Speaking with The Daily Wire, Colby adopted a far calmer persona than his usual foaming-at-the-mouth antics would suggest. He took the opportunity to detail where it all went wrong at American Top Team.
Chaos: Poirier “forced” Covington out of American Top Team
“We have a history that goes back almost 10 years. We used to train at a gym in South Florida. We trained blood, sweat and tears for 10 years together, I helped him so many times.
I remember I used to help him out with his contract all the time, ‘cause I was a little ahead of him and I’d won a world title and he was like ‘Hey, how much is your pay?’ Like, ‘How much you gonna make here?’”
According to Covington, all his generosity of spirit went unappreciated. “So, I help him be a well rounded fighter and then one day he just decided to turn his back on me.
He’s like ‘I’m not training with you. I’m not gonna help you.’ I was gonna fight this guy Robbie Lawler, who’s a legend in the UFC. It was one of his friends.
He’s like, ‘I’m not training with Colby, I don’t want nothing to do with Colby. I don’t like his act, his character. I want him kicked out of the gym,’ and like he started putting his feelings into the gym owner and was like ‘Hey I want him out.’
Like, ‘I don’t want him here.’ “So, he was kind of one of the reasons I was forced to leave my old gym. So we just have a very bad history. I mean, I don’t have any nice things to say about him.”
While many are aware of the animosity surrounding Covington’s departure from ATT, this is the first time that “Chaos” himself has opened up on the subject. At the time, he claimed that the gym’s zero-tolerance approach to trash talk and the “jealousy” of other fighters contributed to his choice to leave.
The accusation that he was “kicked out” dates back to the original departure in 2020, when Covington slammed his teammates for complaining about him. At the time, it was “Joanna Jedrzejczyk, ‘Doofus’ Dustin Poirier and ‘Street Judas’ (Jorge) Masvidal, they’re crying to (Lambert) like babies every day, creating conflict in the gym in the middle of pro fighters’ training sessions”.
Colby is set to take on Kamaru Usman at UFC 268 later this year, where he will once again challenge for the welterweight title.
Do you want to hear Dustin Poirier’s side of the story? Is a Covington vs ATT grudge match on the cards? Let us know in the comments.
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