Colby Covington – Was It All Worth It? The Truth and the Moral in Fighting

We are in the aftermath of UFC 296 and Leon Edwards is still your welterweight champion of the world. On the other side of the spectrum is Colby ‘Chaos’ Covington. A polarizing figure, who turned many heads in the past week and in the lead-up to the championship main event.

The burning question and what separates two groups of people is: Did Colby Covington choose the right path, can we understand his actions and ‘feel’ for him? Let’s talk about the trash talk, that (now) infamous gimmick of his and try to separate what is a good ol’ provocation vs. a real low blow, that just goes off the rails and is bad for everyone.

The very beginnings – turmoil of the ‘Chaos’

As it’s very well documented by now, Colby Covington had a significant change in his style (personality-wise) and is now a completely different character than what we first saw from the former standout OSU wrestler and All-American.

We dive into this for context. What caused Colby Covington to stir off the path of a respectful, hard-working UFC competitor, was the company’s decision that his style is not marketable for the firm. As someone who devoted his whole life to this one thing by that point, Covington is filled with unexplainable rage and disappointment.

This is the point of the story where we can for sure feel for him and try to understand why he is willing to stoop so low today. One can only imagine. Putting all the eggs in one basket (as the villain of our story put it himself), then every ounce of hard work is erased. For what? People’s opinions? Especially people who don’t know you, your hopes and dreams?

Colby’s back is against the wall and we can kind of get inside his mind at this point. Understanding what is next to come will be an explosion of one man’s bottled-up emotions.

The act – what we had witnessed from this notorious gimmick

It’s October 2017. and Covington is about to go against Demian Maia, in Brasil. He was told that he is about to get cut by the UFC’s brass. His style of fighting wasn’t suitable for the company’s vision to promote future contenders. So Colby decides: “What the hell? Just go with it and see what happens!”

Previously, we saw some glimpses of Covington’s dark side. After some victories (Max Griffin, for example), Covington showed showmanship, bad blood and a different side of that blue-collar kid he was portraying most of the time.

In the fight week and on the scales one day before the fight – Covington tried to get into Demian Maia’s head, which immediately woke some fans to this new Colby. Maia has been well-respected for years in the MMA community, a soft-spoken, humble guy. He never had a beef with anyone, so what was Colby doing right there?

In both love and war – everything goes

An Ancient Greek is saying that both in love and war – everything goes! But is this true, should it be this way or do we need to keep some human senses and look at ourselves in the mirror?

Great trash talkers throughout history, such as Muhammad Ali, Chael Sonnen, Conor McGregor, Mike Tyson – they all went very low at some points. We can say: “Alright, they are human, stuff happens.” But when someone builds a character around insulting the injured, or deceased and goes after people’s families… Well, that’s different.

The author remembers three instances where Covington completely lost the plot. First, after the Lawler win, going in at Matt Hughes after the UFC’s legend had suffered a near-fatal train accident. Whatever went on with Matt Hughes, the allegations and truths – that was uncalled for, but some of the hardcore dark comedy fans liked it.

The second and third instances are what stay in our minds, to truly reflect on Covington’s “trash talk” and character(s). Leading up to their first fight, Usman and Covington had a press conference, where Colby went to insult Usman’s former manager, a deceased person – Glenn Robinson.

Covington stated that Robinson would be watching the fight from hell. After Glenn’s daughters came out and asked Colby to apologize or at least stop talking about stuff in that manner – Covington doubled down in an interview with The Mac Life , where he stated that Glenn wasn’t a good person and he didn’t feel the need to apologize.