Colby Covington found a new target on Wednesday, and it wasn’t anybody he’s scheduled to fight. Asked about Gable Steveson’s loss to Sean Sharaf at UFC 331, Covington pinned the result on the man he identified as Steveson’s cornerman, Jon Jones, in comments Ariel Helwani posted to X.
“You’re now taking energy from a guy that’s a literal demon,” Covington said. He called Jones “the biggest thing holding him back” and then went straight at the coaching résumé: “He’s not a good coach. He’s not a proven coach.”
There’s a legitimate question buried in there. Covington just piled so much theater on top of it that you need a shovel to find it.
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The part worth hearing
Strip out the demon line and the talk about bad energy and Covington is asking something reasonable. What has Jones built as a coach? Covington even conceded that Jones “may have been a great fighter and done some great things in the UFC,” which is about as warm as Colby gets toward anybody. The fighting record speaks loudly enough on its own. The same day, Gaston “Tonga” Reyno was on X asking followers whether Jones’ 28-1 in MMA was a harder record to build than Floyd Mayweather’s 50-0 in boxing.
Being 28-1 and being a good cornerman are two separate jobs, though, and plenty of all-time greats never figure out how to translate what they did instinctively into instructions someone else can use under pressure. Steveson came into UFC 331 as a blue-chip prospect, per MMA Fighting, and lost in what the outlet called a massive upset. When a heavyweight with that much expectation on him goes down, looking hard at the people in his corner is fair game. If Covington had stopped at “he’s not a proven coach,” I’d be nodding along.
The part that falls apart
He didn’t stop there, and he never got specific. Covington didn’t point to a single moment from the fight. No bad instruction between rounds, no plan that blew up, no exchange where the corner left Steveson hanging. His whole case is that Steveson thinks it’s cool to hang out with one of the greatest of all time, and that this is “killing himself, bro.” That’s a diagnosis without an exam.
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Worse, it erases the guy who actually won. Sharaf went from relative unknown to, in MMA Fighting’s words, an overnight sensation by beating Steveson, and the rest of the heavyweight division noticed. Anthony Wint stayed undefeated at UFC 332 with a 23-second knockout of Lucas Armand, then spent his post-fight interview calling for Sharaf. Wint said Sharaf “has the skills” and “the power to put me out,” and he’s angling for a spot on UFC 334 on Nov. 14 in New York. He also told reporters that Sharaf’s fans would be yelling, “No, Sean, go out there and knock this dude out again.” That’s a fighter taking Sharaf seriously, which is more than Covington’s version of events manages.
My favorite line in all of this came from Wint, describing how often he gets compared to other football-to-MMA heavyweights: “Pretty much every conversation is Josh or it used to be Gable.” Used to be. Sharaf did that. Jones’ aura didn’t.
Consider the source
Covington is not short on opinions this week. In a separate clip Helwani posted, he said Carlos Prates has “no chance” against Islam Makhachev and predicted a Kimura or a head-and-arm choke. He’s also the current RAF titleholder, and he was supposed to grapple local fighter Mayton Perea in the Hype co-main event in Quito on Sunday before being replaced at the 11th hour by Juan Albarello. Hype never said why Covington didn’t enter the ring. Perea, who earned a UFC deal in September with a 45-second knockout on Dana White’s Contender Series, tapped Albarello with a foot americana in just over two minutes.
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That’s relevant only because a guy lecturing another fighter about the people around him might want his own week to look tidier first. It doesn’t make his coaching point wrong. It does make the demon stuff easier to file under the Colby Covington Show, which has been running for years and always needs a villain.
Here’s where I land. Steveson’s camp should be able to answer the coaching question with specifics, because it’s a real question and it’ll keep coming up if he loses again. Nobody should mistake Covington’s version for an answer, since he offered nothing from the actual fight to back it. Covington, meanwhile, headlines RAF Abu Dhabi against Khamzat Chimaev in a cruiserweight crossover championship match on Nov. 14 at Etihad Arena, and he’s going to need a lot more than good energy in that corner.
