Colby Covington continues to speak out against the UFC after they refused to book him on the Freedom 250 card at the White House.
Covington was the original UFC Trump booster. Before it became trendy, “Chaos” was showing up to all his media duties and fights with his red MAGA hat, singing The Donald’s praises to the roof. Despite the years of support, he never seemed to get much love back from Trump, and now he’s being passed over for the White House card.
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Instead, the UFC wants him to fight the winner of UFC Winnipeg’s Mike Malott vs. Gilbert Burns fight. That’s in April, leaving Colby twiddling his thumbs until August at the earliest. In a new interview with Kick streamer N3ON, Covington explained that’s how the UFC treats a lot of fighters when they push back against the promotion.
“You have no say,” Covington complained. “Hunter Campbell, who is like the UFC’s lawyer, he kinda just tells you what direction they’re gonna go in and it’s either you take it or leave it. So you don’t really get a choice in what you wanna do. They just leave you, they ice you. They won’t give you fights and just let you sit out there. They’ll say, ‘Hey, you you turned down this fight. Now you’re not gonna fight for the year. You’re not gonna make money.’”
Colby tells a lot of lies, but he’s mostly right on this one. If you refuse a fight the UFC offers, they’ll ‘toll’ you, which means they extend your contract length by several months. They’ll also not bother to offer you another fight for several months. It’s one of the many sticks the UFC uses rather than carrots to control the roster and ensure fighters think twice about saying no to them.
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“They’ll freeze you out, even if it’s not a good move and you don’t think you’re getting paid what you deserve, it doesn’t matter,” he added. “They say, ‘Hey, you either accept it, be a company man, or we’ll just ice you and you don’t get a fight to make money.’”
Once again, the worst person you know is making a good point. It’s hard to be sympathetic to Colby Covington given what a horrible person he is. And let’s be clear: he turns down fights all the time because he doesn’t like the names being offered or the pay that goes along with it. That’s why he fights so rarely. But the UFC really does operate like a dictatorship, and they’ll ice anyone out at the drop of a hat rather than work things out.
If this was resulting in fans getting all the great fights they want and truly immaculate matchmaking, there’d be no complaints. But these days, we agree with the fighters: the matchmaking kinda sucks and the fights being booked don’t make much sense.
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Colby isn’t the only big name riding the bench for the first half of 2026. Is it incompetence or malice keeping everyone off of lineups? Either way, fans are not having a good time, bro.
