Colby Covington has a new fighter looking to fight him, and it’s a familiar face.
Santiago Ponzinibbio, Covington’s former American Top Team teammate, has challenged him to a fight in the UFC’s octagon in 2026. Ponzinibbio (30-9 MMA, 12-8 UFC) has been preparing for a UFC return, and he’d like to fight Covington (17-5 MMA, 12-5 UFC). The Argentine has been growing tired of Covington’s antics and attacks on his ATT colleagues.
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“A fight I’d really like would be against Colby Covington,” Ponzinibbio told Hablemos MMA in Spanish. “He’s a fighter who’s always asking to fight my teammates, and now is talking about Bo Nickal, who already has a fight at the White House. I don’t understand why he’s always asking for fights that he knows won’t happen. We had the opportunity to train together at American Top Team. He knows that it won’t be an easy fight for him, and maybe that’s why he might not accept it, but I think it would be a great fight for me.”
Ponzinibbio, who’s been training at ATT in Coconut Creek, Fla., for 13 years, he has known Covington for quite some time. The two used to train a lot together before Covington was kicked off the team in 2020 after beefing with Jorge Masvidal and others at the gym.
“We shared the same training, Mike Brown, and we had the same grappling classes with Mike, and I’d train with him, Masvidal – when they were close friends – and a big group of welterweights,” Ponzinibbio explained. “We used to have a lot of welterweights in the gym back in the day. We would train constantly. We’d spar. I know him very well. That’s why I have my doubts he’d accept the fight. I beat him a lot in training.”
Ponzinibbio was not fond of Covington when the two trained under the same gym, and that feeling hasn’t changed six years later.
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“He’s an idiot. That guy is an idiot,” Ponzinibbio said. “I remember one time I finished him with a guillotine while we were grappling, and he started yelling, ‘F*ck, f*ck.’ The guy is an idiot. He never contributed to training. He was very competitive and very selfish. He kept everything to himself and would get into arguments all the time with trainers. I don’t know why they didn’t kick him out of the gym any sooner. I think they overkept him, but once he got kicked out, they realized who he is as a person. He didn’t stop talking bad about people, even about Dustin Poirier, who’s a great guy and teammate. He spoke badly about Joanna (Jedrzejczyk). You think, ‘Oh, he just wants promotion.’ No, he’s like that. People who don’t know him might think it’s publicity, but it’s not. I know him. He’s like that.”
This article originally appeared on MMA Junkie: Santiago Ponzinibbio calls out ‘idiot’ Colby Covington
