Colby Covington doesn’t do quiet takes, and his verdict on Usman Nurmagomedov came out at full volume. In an interview with BC.Game, first reported by MMA Junkie, Covington said the PFL lightweight champion should never be allowed to compete in the UFC.
Here’s where things stand. Nurmagomedov is sitting in an Abu Dhabi prison on a six-month sentence, with a 300,000 AED fine on top, for slapping Merab Dvalishvili and kicking off a brawl at the RAF host hotel. This happened while he was testing free agency with a UFC deal on the table as a possibility. Terrible timing doesn’t begin to cover it.
“This behavior from Usman Nurmagomedov should disqualify him from ever being a UFC athlete,” Covington said.
I’ll say it plainly. Covington’s conclusion is right for the foreseeable future, even if half of his evidence is shakier than he thinks.
Shanghai and the hotel are two different things
Covington built his case on two incidents, and he treated them as the same offense. They aren’t.
At UFC Shanghai, Song Yadong knocked out Umar Nurmagomedov, and Usman went over the cage in a frenzy. MMA Junkie’s account says he jumped in to check on Umar. Covington tells it differently. “He almost cheap-shotted Song Yadong when Song’s just celebrating a big win,” he said. “He jumps in the cage, tries to elbow him, and then now he does this.”
Those are two very different versions, and the elbow claim is Covington’s, not the reporting’s. Jumping the cage is a real problem. It’s dangerous, it’s unprofessional, and Song had every right to his moment after a win that big. But I’ve watched enough nights where somebody’s family member stays down a beat too long to understand the panic that sends a person over the fence. That’s a fine and a stern phone call from the promotion. It shouldn’t be on anybody’s permanent record.
The hotel is something else entirely. Nobody was unconscious on the canvas. No adrenaline from a fight was pumping through the building. A man slapped another man at a host hotel, a brawl followed, and a court in Abu Dhabi decided it was worth six months behind bars. Emotion doesn’t explain that away, because the emotional excuse only works in the moment, and that moment had nothing to do with protecting anyone.
That’s the incident that should end the UFC conversation for now. Covington put it well when he said, “Us as UFC fighters are held to a higher standard.” A promotion that wants to sign a champion from a rival league is buying the fighter and the headaches. Right now the headache is a prison sentence.
Where Colby loses me
Then he got to this: “I don’t care what his record is fighting bums.”
Come on. You don’t win a PFL title by beating nobodies, and dragging the competition into an argument about conduct makes the whole thing look like a grudge. Covington’s point about professionalism lands hard on its own. He didn’t need the cheap shot about the résumé.
Same goes for “I hope he’s never able to come to America.” That’s a long way past a contract decision, and it pulls the take away from the cage and toward something personal.
The Makhachev angle
The more interesting part of the interview was Islam Makhachev. Covington has been respectful toward the welterweight champion and even defended him for choosing not to compete at UFC 336. He didn’t like Makhachev backing Nurmagomedov here, though he gave the family side its due first.
“That’s your brother. That’s your training partner that you’ve grown up your whole life with. So I understand you looking out for him,” Covington said. Then the turn: “you shouldn’t have come out and given a speech or a comment at all, because he’s definitely in the wrong.”
This is Covington at his most reasonable, and also his least realistic. Asking a man to stay silent while someone he grew up with sits in a cell is asking a lot. The better line from that same answer was the one about “giving him the help he needs.” If Makhachev’s comments had pushed in that direction, nobody would be writing about them.
What the UFC should do
Pass for now. No contract talks while Nurmagomedov is serving his sentence. If the conversation comes back after his release, any deal should come with conduct terms written into it, because the Shanghai fence-jump and the hotel slap together make a pattern the promotion can’t pretend it missed.
As for Dvalishvili, Covington called him “a nice person” and “a humble person” and said he wants him back on the RAF mat “ASAP.” That’s the one thing in this whole mess I’m rooting for. Merab is supposed to wrestle this weekend, and the best response to a slap in a hotel lobby is him out there grinding somebody into the mat like nothing happened.
