Colby Covington continues to vent his frustration toward the UFC.
It’s been 15 months since former UFC interim welterweight champion Covington (17-5 MMA, 12-5 UFC) last competed when he suffered a doctor’s stoppage TKO loss to Joaquin Buckley.
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In a recent interview with MMA Junkie, Covington took issue with being snubbed out of UFC Freedom 250 on June 14 at the White House after continuously showing unwavering support for President Donald Trump through the years. Now he’s peeled back the curtain on his dealings with UFC brass.
“You have no say,” Covington said of the UFC in a stream with N3on. “Hunter Campbell, who is like the UFC lawyer, he kind of just tells you what direction they’re going to go, and it’s either you take it or leave it. So, you don’t really get a choice what you want to do. They just leave you. They ice you. They won’t give you fights. They’ll just let you sit out there.
“They’ll say, ‘Hey, you turned down this fight, now you’re not going to fight for the year, you’re not going to make money.’ 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. They say, ‘You either accept it and be a company man, or we’ll just ice you, and you don’t get a fight to make money.'”
Covington said Arman Tsarukyan is a prime example of that after withdrawing from his lightweight title fight against Islam Makhachev just one day before UFC 311.
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“He’s definitely getting iced because he turned down the title fight,” Covington said of Tsarukyan. “He pulled out on the week of the fight when the UFC was selling this pay-per-view and then he’s the main event and he pulls out.”
This article originally appeared on MMA Junkie: Colby Covington: UFC fighters ‘have no say’ in matchmaking
